Analogy

In Project Management, frequent enough that decisions made are merely following analogies.
Due to time and budget constraints, there are many bits and pieces in a project are "assumed" good based on other factors.


For example, in our banking products, often there is too many products to be tested. Hence, we selected a sample for testing, and if the result is favorable, we conclude that the rest of the products should behave the same too. For example, we have Savings account, Checking account, Islamic Savings, Islamic Checking, FD accounts, Overdraft account, Foreign currency accounts and many more. When we're launching a new card, take cash withdrawal as an example, our argument of analogy will be, "We are able to withdraw money from Savings account and Overdraft account, so we can conclude that withdrawals function is operational for all type of accounts using this new launch card."


The reasoning behind this argument is valid, because withdrawals function is controlled by a same system. It  receive instruction from the card, validate the account for possible blocks and then validate sufficient credit in it. If all goes as expected, then the fund will be dispense and the withdrawal is deemed successful. This system does the same for each account type, and hence the decision using the analogy is acceptable.