Yes, I agree with Ashley that its good to set buffers in your schedule to account for the unexpected. At Sloan, if I’m working on a project-especially the development of a medical device- I always include buffers to my timeline. I know the principal investigator/ inventor will sometimes be behind on providing deliverables and will sometimes be out of the country on conferences, in clinic, etc so I always include buffers in the timeline to set the expectations of management. If you think the development and commercialization will go accordingly to your original gnatt chart or whatever you determined to be the optimum timeline, I personally think that is naive because that will never happen. You will always end up making changes to the gnatt chart and deliverables along the way. It is always good to plan though. As we learned in lecture, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So I think you should do your best as PM to set realistic timelines and expectations for management but don’t be surprised if the timelines and deliverables change along the way.