Decision Making for Project Management

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The process of project management is the process of making decisions. Much of our thinking about how to make decisions reflect an ideal generally called rational economic actor. In an ideal world, you weigh the alternatives based on reliable data, compute the most advantageous path and decide to choose that course. We maximize the expected economic outcome given some set of constraints. Ideally, we do this in a timely manner using a process that is transparent and inspectable. Everyone involved can understands why that particular decision was made. In the messy real world, we down-select the alternatives to consider. We work with limited data, fuzzy or even inaccurate data and, frequently, decide to take the path of least resistance.

Getting to better decisions requires some planning well before the decision is to be taken. Increasingly we acknowledge the role our inherent biases play in our decisions. The insights of behavioral economics allow us, up front, to design decision making strategies and processes which limit the role of our cognitive biases. No process will immunize us against all failures but knowing what to look out for increases our success rate.

During this talk we will examine how to increase the chances that our decisions will actually advance our project’s objectives without being stick in analysis paralysis. We will discuss how to make your decision making more aligned with your goals and make those decisions quicker and more reality based.

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