The PMI states that a WBS MUST be product-oriented (planned outcomes, not planned actions).

Why do
they say this and what would this imply regarding the precedence of the WBS and the requirements
engineering effort?

The product-oriented approach of the Work Breakdown Structure obeys the approach of the end result
as central focus of the project rather than the individual means. The typical project management where
the actions are planned carefully and laid out in a Gantt-chart or other type of tracking system, and
followed up religiously is an approach from the past. Our current systems move so fast and change so
quickly that it is necessary to keep focus on the grand-prize, the final result of what we are expecting to
achieve.

This approach also enables a better measurement of the engineering, budget and time spent achieving
the objective, as we are always measuring against what the final goal should be.

-The scheduling techniques we've discussed all seem suitable in practice, yet we find that many, if not
most, projects fall behind schedule and go over budget. Why?

Working on a company that does new products constantly and each product requires its own project
management, I live the constant over budget and behind schedule scenario.

I believe the reasons can be listed and understood but it is very difficult to overcome for next projects,
these are:

1. Unforeseen complications: it is very common to allot a time and budget to designing a piece of
the product that due to the specific conditions and particular scenarios, it ends up being
redesigned several times, creating a delay and extra cost.
2. Overconfidence: when you have been doing something for so long that you grow comfortable
doing it, you feel confident, this confidence sometimes works against you as the paths we follow
are not always the same as we’ve experienced before.
3. Pressure to release: there are always deadlines that must be met no matter what, these
deadlines sometimes work against us as we end up providing a solution that is either incomplete
or not optimal; in many cases it comes back as it requires redesign and/or fixing.

At the end, our imperfect human nature comes back and reminds us how limited we are and how little
control we have.