Here is an example of another kind of control problem. In the central development laboratory of a large diversified company, one engineering section had several projects that involved information recording. One of them was a rather ambitious effort, really pushing the state of the art. It had been programmed for about two years and six hundred thousand dollars. I was called on to review it.

There were six months left and about half the money. The project engineer was quite proud of his "on schedule" performance. He showed me that his expenditure rate matched very closely the money schedule which had been set up more than eighteen months before. But he lacked a very good idea of how his technical performance to date matched his original plan. The plan was somewhat nebulous, undetailed, and hopelessly out of date. He finally managed to enumerate some of the important things his team had accomplished.

Of course, he and I immediately sat down to look ahead, to look at the future technical steps still needed. The project was drawing to a close. Certain items had to be designed and built. They were to have met specified tests six months from then. It turned out that things were not nearly as rosy as he had supposed, not really on schedule at all. The project team had been thinking almost exclusively in the past rather than in terms of the future.

Projects can be effectively controlled...