New Book Review: "Project Decisions"

Recently posted book review for Project Decisions: The Art and Science, by Lev Virine and Michael Trumper, Management Concepts, 2008, reposted here:

Reading this text was a follow-up by this reviewer on reading "Why Can't You Just Give Me the Number?", by Patrick Leach, and "How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business", by Douglas W. Hubbard (see my reviews). While these two efforts delve to some extent into the mathematics associated with measurement and probability, however, the reader will see very little calculation in the text at hand because it concentrates on the processes surrounding making effective project decisions, most of which involve human factors (both one's own and those associated with other project stakeholders). As Virine discusses in the preface to this book, an effective project manager needs to be conversant on how rational choices in project management can be made, how improved ability to make these choices can be achieved, and what tools are available to aid the decision making process. The authors provide a look into the structured decision analysis that can answer these questions.

This text breaks down the discussion into five parts: (1) "Introduction to Project Decision Analysis", (2) "Decision-Framing", (3) "Modeling the Situation", (4) "Quantitative Analysis", and (5) "Implementation, Monitoring, and Reviews". The bulk of the text is weighted toward the introductory first part, followed by the fourth part on analysis. In addition, the authors provide four appendixes that provide a listing of risk and decision analysis software products used in project management, a summary of the heuristics and biases in project management, risk checklists for both generic and software development projects, and a listing of multi-criteria decision-making methodologies. Since this book covers a lot of ground, it is difficult to review the content from an everyman perspective (every reader is going to gravitate to those sections in which they are interested, either because they want to investigate what the authors have to say on a given topic with which they already have an opinion, or because they want to explore topics with which they were not previously exposed).

This reviewer found the first and fourth parts especially relevant to his project work, and the following chapters within these parts: (2) "'Gut Feel' vs. Decision Analysis: Introduction to the Psychology of Project Decision-Making", (7) "Are You Allowed to Make a Decision? Or the 'Frustrated Developer's Syndrome", (15) "Decision Trees and the Value of New Information", (16) "What is Project Risk? or PERT and Monte Carlo", (17) "'A Series of Unfortunate Events', or Event Chain Methodology", and (18) "The Art of Decision Analysis Reporting". Despite the witnessing of failed projects, and the various degrees of success leading his own projects, this reviewer especially appreciated the author discussions on cognitive and motivational biases, perception, bounded rationality, heuristics and biases, and behavioral traps. In addition, although as a consultant much of the politics to which this reviewer would otherwise be effected can be thwarted, the project politics that the authors discuss always exist to some extent regardless of client, and this reviewer finds invaluable presentations of how these issues are commonplace in industry and how they might be addressed.

While most of the graphs and charts are not provided until the fifteenth chapter, the ones provided in the fourth part of this book are well done and very relevant to the corresponding discussions on quantitative analysis. While the content is presented at a high level, the illustrations provide excellent introductory as well as reminder segments on topics in this space. In the eighteenth chapter entitled "The Art of Decision Analysis Reporting", the authors discuss an experiment they conducted with 23 engineers. Each engineer was asked to assign a percentage of probability to verbal expressions covering a range of certainty from "Almost No Chance" and "Highly Unlikely" to "Highly Likely" and "Almost Certain". The results, which demonstrate a wide disparity in interpretation, are quite fascinating. For example, the engineers interpreted "Improbable" as a 0% to 40% probability, and "Almost Certain" as a 70% to near-100% probability. As a Six Sigma practitioner, this reviewer understands the value of concrete metrics and how language can easily be misinterpreted, but the chart accompanying this discussion proved very effective for this reviewer. Well recommended.