These are just a few examples of projects that suffered severe schedule delays and cost overruns, or that were unable to deliver on their promised scope. Planning projects accurately is notoriously difficult, whether they're publicly or privately funded, or in domains like construction, technology, pharma, or infrastructure. According to the 2018 "Pulse of the Profession" study conducted by the Project Management Institute, between 2011 to 2018 only about 50% of projects where completed on time and approximately 55% were within budget. Even though firms have been investing in project management techniques since the 1970s, the accuracy of project plans has not improved much. Inaccurate forecasts involving durations, costs, resources, and benefits are clearly major source of risk for leaders' careers and organizations' growth opportunities.

June 1, 2017 --If all had gone according to plan, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) would be celebrating its 10th anniversary of capturing stunning portraits of distant galaxies, NASA would be hard at work on its dark energy detector, Virgin Galactic would be running two daily tourist flights to the edge of space for just $50,000 a head, and a Russian company would be doing brisk business with its orbiting luxury space hotel. Of course, that's not how it worked out in reality. Last month, Virgin Galactic made its tenth annual prediction that "next year" it will finally shuttle tourists to space, joining the JWST on the horizon of 2018, and the inaugural mission of NASA's new Space Launch System slipped to 2019. As for that space hotel, don't ask. Planning for the future is part of what it means to be human, but cognitive biases, development challenges, and financing conventions conspire to make accurate predictions next to impossible.