Preface

This is not another traditional book on project management. There are an adequate number of books on managing projects, and adding another one will not necessarily increase project manager skills or contribute to project success. What project managers need most is a resource that will help them become better decision makers.

In traditional project management training, project managers are taught how to plan projects according to business objectives, how to gather requirements, how to develop a management plan, how to assign resources, how to track progress, how to handle conflict, and how to maintain control. We have found, however, that project managers receive very little education or training focused on the decision-making required to successfully manage complex, large-scale projects.

The objective of this book is to show how successful decision-making significantly contributes to project success. We highlight the hundreds of decisions project managers have to make to support the project management life cycle, and we present various techniques that facilitate the decision-making process. We also provide an overview of decision analysis as it relates to project management.

Decision-Making in Project Management

Project managers make many decisions during the project life cycle, including:

Defining the project organization

Selecting the team

Planning, budgeting, and scheduling the project

Conducting needs analysis

Conducting product analysis and concept design

Allocating resources to the project

Executing the project

Monitoring and controlling the project

Performing test management

Evaluating and terminating the project.

Faulty decision-making in any area can have huge financial consequences. Other negative effects can include demoralization of staff, loss of staff, wasted resources, and missed opportunities. Despite this significant impact on projects and people, project management books and training don’t give much attention to decision-making. As a result, project managers might overlook the most critical element in managing projects—the decisions that are required to accomplish project objectives.

Project management training materials commonly cover risk management, which focuses on minimizing risks by identifying uncertainties that could prevent a project from achieving cost, schedule, and performance objectives. In addition to cost, schedule, and performance risks, however, risk management training should also cover the specific risks associated with decision-making. To increase the probability of project success, project managers must have an understanding of both the risk to project objectives and the risk to project decisions.

Managing decisions is the key to managing successful projects. Rootcause analysis or failure analysis often identifies a poor decision, an untimely decision, or the absence of a decision as the cause of a failed project. A project can survive without adequate resources, but it can never survive faulty decision-making.

How This Book Is Organized

Chapter 1 begins with an exploration of why making good decisions is essential to good project management. It explains why a decision context is required for making effective decisions and presents the three cornerstones of decision-making. Next, the chapter focuses on reasons for project success before presenting the anatomy of a project failure. Making decisions is no easy task. The chapter ends with a recommendation for a planned process for handling the difficult task of making decisions.

Chapter 2 introduces the anatomy of a project management decision and the impact of such decisions on project success. The chapter identifies what happens when good and bad decisions are made: good decisions lead to good outcomes and bad decisions lead to bad outcomes. It also covers reasons for project success and failure and concludes with case studies that highlight project successes and project failures.

Chapter 3 presents the project management life cycle as a framework that guides decision-making and provides a representative set of sample decisions unique to each stage of the life cycle. This summary of project management gives the basis for the discussion of decision-making throughout the rest of the book.

Chapter 4 describes decision-making—its history, what makes good decisions, the different approaches to decision-making—and how to avoid project failure. The chapter distinguishes good decisions and good outcomes—good outcomes are never guaranteed. Good decisions result from a good decision-making process in which the decision maker carefully considers the values and objectives associated with the decision context and seeks out alternative courses of action.

Chapter 5 is the heart of this book: It identifies those decisions required for successful project management. Decision categories are initially divided into product system and development system. The product system is the focus of the project. The development system is the organization of people and support tools that constitutes the project. Each category is further decomposed into the many decisions made during the project life cycle.

Chapter 6 focuses on framing decisions—clarifying the most important decision elements to consider when selecting the best solution—and describes the distinct elements of a decision. The chapter presents a new qualitative decision support tool that can serve as a template for framing a decision. A case study of the 1950s Sidewinder missile illustrates the concept of a decision frame.

Chapter 7 presents several techniques for generating decision alternatives. The chapter also demonstrates how to apply the decision frame to alternatives. Two case studies—the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Windows NT development—illustrate these concepts.

Chapter 8 continues with a presentation of several qualitative approaches to analyzing decision alternatives. Well-known cognitive biases and heuristics are summarized to caution against overconfidence in decision-making. The chapter ends with a summary of the requirements for good decisions.

Chapter 9 discusses risk and uncertainty in projects. Risk analysis must be incorporated into the decision-making process. A case study and decision frame for the Hubble Space Telescope project illustrate some of the important points about risk and uncertainty.

Chapter 10 highlights why it’s important to focus on decision-making and decision analysis in current project management training and recommends a curriculum to integrate into such training.

The appendixes provide additional case studies, tools, and checklists for making project decisions, as well as an introduction to decision trees.

We hope that this book will help readers make better project decisions that lead to greater project success.

Robert A. Powell
West Point, New York

Dennis M. Buede
Reston, Virginia