I was thinking of my patients, and how the worst moment for them was when they discovered they were master of their own fate. It was not a matter of bad or good luck. When they could no longer blame fate, they were in despair - Anais Nïn, in Improving Project Performance: Eight Habits of Successful Project teams, Jerry Wellman, Palgrave, 2001.
Since all project work operates in the presence of uncertainty - Reducible (Epistemic) and Irreducible (Aleatory) - the ONLY means of dealing with this uncertainty - and avoiding blaming fate - is to have insight into how these uncertainties impact the probability of success for the project.
This is called Risk Management and the processes of making decisions in the presence of uncertainty.
I recommend another book as guidance in making those decisions, Perspectives on Thinking, Judging, and Decision Making, Wibecke Brun Gideon Keren, Geir Kirkebǿen, and Henry Montgomery (editors).
In there is a chapter titled, "Distinguishing Two Dimension of Uncertainty," Craig Fox and Gülden Ulkümen, where the Aleatory and Epistemic uncertainties have a defined the framework established for making decisions.
Of course, this work and the work of many dozens of other researchers make it clear as always that ...
There is NO principle of Managerial Finance, Probabilistic Decision Making, or Microeconomics by which - in the presence of uncertainty - a credible decision can be made without estimating the outcome of that decision and its impact on the scarce resources that create that uncertainty.
