The Impact of Nonagility on Service Level and Project Duration

Why projects are late” is a fundamental issue in theory and in practice. One well established explanation is that a project’s network structure can be a significant factor—the “fatter” or more parallel the project, the later the project completion. Herein we show that a lack of agility, which may frequently arise in projects when there are external resources, can also be a significant factor in project delays—both in more serial-like projects as well as more parallel ones. Specifically, this paper formally characterizes the concept of agility in projects, shows how a lack of agility can have a significant impact on a project, and gives some general properties on agility with respect to a project’s structure. 1 This paper is co-authored with Professors Karolina J. Glowacka (Hang Seng Management College, Hong Kong) and Timothy J. Lowe (Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa). It was published in Decision Sciences, Volume 43, Number 5, October 2012.