Making Essential Choices with Scant Information Front-end Decision Making in Major Projects

by Williams, Terry M.; Samset, Knut; Sunnevåg, Kjell

• ISBN13: 9780230205864
• ISBN10: 0230205860
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-04-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This is an in-depth look at how to improve decisions on major projects at the concept stage, when there is scant information available. The book describes how to evaluate judgemental information. It looks at how scant information can actually be a strength, and can help establish a broad overall perspective.

Author Biography

TERRY WILLIAMS is a Management Scientist at Southampton University, UK. After 9 years in engineering consultancy developing project risk management, he worked at Strathclyde University, becoming Professor and Department Head, researching the behaviour of major projects and supporting post-project claims. He is a speaker/writer on project modelling, and has written 60 refereed journal articles and books on modelling and learning from complex projects. He is a member of many leading research networks.
 
KJELL SUNNEVG is a senior adviser at the Norwegian Competition Authority. He has worked as a research economist since 1987. His first position was at the Christian Michelsen Institute (CMI) in Bergen, research focus being on petroleum economics. Later, he moved to the Foundation for research in Economics and Business Administration (SNF), extending the research interests to energy economics and public policy and economics. One of his last assignments there was editing/contribute to a report on making decisions based on scant information.
 
KNUT SAMSET is Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and director of a research program on front-end management of major investment projects. He has a background in engineering and social science and has worked many years as consultant and advisor to national and international governmental organizations. He has written a number of books on project design, evaluation, and project risk management.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. vii
List of Tables	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Contributors	p. xii
Introduction
Decisions Made on Scant Information: Overview	p. 3
Projects, Their Quality at Entry and Challenges in the Front-end Phase	p. 18
Aligning Projects
Implementing Strategy Through Project Management: The Importance of Managing the Project Front-end	p. 39
Scenarios Planning	p. 68
Up-Front Assessment of Needs	p. 85
Front-end Alignment of Projects - Doing the Right Project	p. 106
Using Soft Systems Methodology to Structure Project Definition	p. 125
Generating Information
Optimism and Misrepresentation in Early Project Development	p. 147
Decision Behaviour - Improving Expert Judgement	p. 169
Useful Heuristics	p. 195
Expert Judgement of Probability and Risk	p. 213
Evaluation of Risks in Complex Problems	p. 230
Obtaining Distributions from Groups for Decisions Under Uncertainty	p. 257
Analysing Information
Exploratory Quantitative Analysis of Emergent Problems with Scant Information	p. 279
Analyzing Information. Techniques and Analyses	p. 301
Parametric Analysis	p. 331
Making Decisions
The Impact of New Information	p. 353
The Complexity of Decision-Making in Large Projects with Multiple Partners: Be Prepared to Change	p. 375
Project Profitability from Society's Point of View	p. 390
Index	p. 413
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