Main area that can have biggest impact on a project is making unrealistic time line, and it is one of the most common reasons for project failure and improper planning. I have seen many projects not being successful due to timeline or reducing project scope in order to achieve the timeline. This type of situation can occur due to different reasons like over optimistic management, lack of technical capability in project management, pressure to meet the goal or budgeting issue. Management should work with team members to create a realistic project plan and should take input from subject matter experts. Another assumption management take during project timeline is that if they increase resources they can achieve the results faster. For example if they have 1500 hours of FTE(Full Time Effort) that can be achieved by one resource in aprox. 8.75 month (160 hours/month assumption) and if they put 6 resources in project they should be able to finish about 2.2 months. I think this approach should be avoided and project manager should carefully define activities that can go in parallel and how many can be achieved independently or can be distributes. There may be some critical path activities that cannot go in parallel and should be finished before starting next activity. I believe manager should create project plan realistically based on parallel task and critical path activities that can decide the overall timeline and resource allocation during different phases of the project.

References:
Jacobs, F. R. & Chase, R. B., (2012). Operations and Supply Chain Management, (13th ed.). McGraw-Hill Higher Education

I like the electronic reserve reading for chapter 12 “Survival Guide for Project Managers” and it explain about developmental phase of the project. Developmental phase of the project is all about preparing and refining the project different phase like planning, monitoring and controlling Taylor, J. (2006). Basic structure and scope of the project will be defined during this phase. Project manager will start with establishing a high level project team and would ask for resources from functional managers for the project. He will be negotiating for best resources for the project. The crucial point for team building here is that manager should know about the