In this episode, John McIntyre warns us to be careful when using averages to work out project durations (and explains how they are more useful at project level than task level).

He also advises us to consider segmenting stakeholders using whatever criteria are useful to the project in hand, and reminds us that using averages to calculate durations can be very effective in the right circumstances (e.g. when considering programmes or portfolios).

This interview is also available as a video at http://bit.ly/ScaryScars

This is one of Pragmatic PMO's interview series "Successes and Scars Shared", in which Ken Burrell talks to Real Project Managers about what they have learned from things that have gone well on their projects (successes) and things that have gone wrong (scars), so that we can all learn from their experiences.

Sharing short, sharp, project lessons interviews like this is just one of the pragmatic pointers recommended in Ken's book “Learning lessons from Projects: How it works, why it goes wrong, and how it you can do it better”, available from Amazon http://bit.ly/KensLLBook