Making Big Decisions Better

摘要

Most large development projects suffer overruns and delays, despite substantial effort spent onsystems tracking risks and projecting performance. Managers have an especially difficult timemaking big decisions such as major project re-plans. Typical project management systems havekey blind spots that limit their value for comprehensive decisions. Most project managementtools do not address project dynamics – variations in productivity and quality over time underdifferent conditions. System Dynamics models have been used to address this weakness andcapture project dynamics, but typically these models have their own blind spots as they omit keydetails. With many pressing decisions and little time, managers rely on intuition to supplementthe limitations of management tools. The combination of little time for major decisions, limitedtools, and unreliable intuition is a key contributor to the poor results often achieved on majorprojects. This paper offers perspective on the challenges of making major decisions anddescribes a case using an integrated management tool -- a System Dynamics model linked to adatabase of project details. This management system was used to restructure a multi-billiondollar development program with detail and rigor – examining dozens of different options,sensitivities, and leverage points in one month.