ABSTRACT
In looking at decision making in project management we focus on three areas. The first is during the start-up stages, and particularly on feasibility and design. The catalog of failed projects is legion. But often the mistake wasn’t made during the project delivery. It was made back in the early stages, when over-optimistic assumptions were made about the project. This over-optimism can result from bias in the decision making process, people just assuming that they are able to do much better than they really can. Or it can result from political pressure pushing people to declare that they are able to do better than they honestly know that they can. In the next section we consider the nature of decision making in the start-up processes, and the need for a project strategy for the execution stage.
