The Predictability of Fast-Track Projects

Fast-Tracking to accelerate, overlap or compress schedules has an impact on project predictability in terms of achieving the planned objectives (time, cost, and quality). Predictability plays an important role in project success. Some studies focused on the fast-tracking impact on each objective; however, no research directly addressed the relationship between fast-tracking and predictability of the project's objectives. This paper investigates the relationship between fast-tracking and predictability with regard to success in meeting the project's planned objectives. A literature review was used. Significant findings in the study are the confirmations of the literature about the impact of fast-tracking on project predictability. This impact is that fast-tracking may lead to less predictability for the project's outcomes. The research results emphasize the need for further investigation of the relationship between fast-tracking technique and the project's predictability indices (cost variance, time variance and quality variance) in order to a achieve better understanding of the relationship and improve predictability. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.