101Chapter ve: Optimizing the schedule with drag and drag cost
But simply computing the mean of three estimates for each activity tells us
little. If we have ve different paths each of ve activities all leading to a
merge point, the path that turns out to have the most pessimistic results is
likely to affect the merge and all its successors, and there’s really no way to
determine this without a computer.
Today there are many software packages that include what are called
probability risk analysis modules or Monte Carlo simulations. You feed in
the three estimates per activity, tell the software the distribution shapes,
and the software will crank through the schedule of logical dependencies
and duration estimates thousands of times to determ ...