Reference no: EM131313761

Please give a response to the below discussion.

Contingencies in a schedule or budget are to prevent the unexpected, or at least as much as possible. Allowing for a contingency in time in a project schedule means that one is preparing for the unknown that can affect a project (PMBOK, 2013). Contingency time or reserve time can be worked the entire way through the schedule from start to finish. Allowing of float day to continue the project on schedule is important to the stakeholders as well as to the project team.

Knowing how much time is enough is not something that is easy to determine. Padding the schedule to allow for enough reserve typically calls for doubling the days, hours, minutes needed to complete an activity(PMBOK,2013). Many project managers use the most likely, optimistic, and pessimistic approach or tE=(tO + tM +tP)/3, which means that the most likely approach is an estimate duration of the activity at hand including resource allocation, production, realistic expectations, participants and interruptions, the optimistic approach is the activity duration based on the analysis of the best case scenario for the activity and the pessimistic approach is the activity duration based on the worst case scenario for the activity (PMBOK, 2013).

Determining if Parkinson's law or Murphy's law will set in at some point during the project really depends on the project manager and team as well as how the project is doing along the way. Parkinson's law is the theory of "work expands to fill the time available for its completion" and Murphy's law is the theory that "if anything can go wrong, it will" (PMBOK, 2013). Working on a project that has built in reserve, float, cushion or contingency time may force the team to work slower and longer instead of as efficient as possible in as little time needed to complete the task. When things start to go wrong the team may start to think that nothing on the project will go right till the agony is over and the project is completed.