ABSTRACT
A project spends most of its time in the project performance state when predicted and unpredicted events have the potential to increase costs and cause delays. Schedules can be shortened because they are based on calendar time rather than actual time. In calendar time, a day has 24h but the actual time spent on a project will depend on the number of people working. Perceived from the Continuum holistic thinking perspectives, the literature and experience quoted are not contradictory they just lack systems thinking because they are often set in a single context and then generalized to all projects. The widget system project provides an example of how a problem that shows up in the system test state of the system development process can impact the schedule. Just before the systems requirements review, the customer informed the project manager that the project schedule was unacceptable and needed to be speeded up by 25%.
