ProjectThink : why good managers make poor project choices

Print version:

Cover; Contents; List of Figures; List of Tables; Preface; Test Your Judgment; Answers to Judgment Test; I Why Do Good Managers Make Poor Project Decisions?; 1 Mental Errors in Project Management; The Power of Misplaced Perception; Why Do We Make Irrational Choices?; Mental Errors in Project Management; Mental Errors or Intention?; Why Is Recognizing and Dealing with Mental Errors so Difficult?; 2 Analysis vs. Mental Errors; Why Don't People Perform Even a Simple Analysis?; Overconfidence; Confirmation Bias; Optimism Bias; Analysis Is Not Trivial; What Is the Value of the Analysis? 3 Choice EngineeringThe Processes vs. Mental Errors; What Is Choice Engineering?; Policing vs. Choice Engineering?; When Policing Is Necessary; A Few Ideas Behind Choice Engineering; II Travel Inside a Project Manager's Mind; 4 Memory and Project Mental Errors; Memory Errors in Project Management; What Is a Memory?; Reconstructive Memory; How Memories Are Created; How to Improve Your Ability to Memorize; Do Memory Exercises Actually Work?; Using Choice Engineering to Mitigate Memory Errors; 5 Emotions in Project Management; The Head-butt Felt Around the World. Our Emotional Choices Often are Not the Best OnesEmotional Intelligence; How to Become Emotionally Intelligent: A Choice Engineering Approach; 6 Behavioral Traps; Sunk Cost; Time Bombs; Prudence Traps; Collective Traps; 7 Heuristics and Biases; How Project Managers Became "Gamblers"; Availability Heuristic; Anchoring; Representativeness and Stereotypes; Some Other Heuristics and Biases; 8 What Makes Your Project Team Happy?; Why Are We Talking About Happiness in Project Management?; Why Did Eliot Spitzer Do It?; Why Some People Are Happier Than Others; Habituation. Why Time Seems to Pass More Quickly as We AgeManaging Exceptions; How Happy Are You in Your Project Team?; III Project Analysis vs. Mental Errors; 9 How to Process Project Information; My Dentist Has a Very Nice Website; All Marketers Are Liars; "Time Zone" Trick in Project Management?; "Peak-end" Rule in Project Management; Filtering Information for Your Project; I Did Not Read This Book, But I Know I Do Not Like It; Any Suggestions About What to Do?; 10 An Expected Value Manifesto; How to Win a Lottery; How Project Managers Ignore Expected Value. Incorrect Probability and Incorrect Expected ValueHow to Choose a Scenario Based on Multiple Conflicting Objectives; 11 Project Risks and Mental Errors; Which Risk Is the Most Dangerous?; Are You Afraid of Falling Asteroids?; What is Risk Attitude?; Why People Have Different Attitudes towards Risk; Paradoxes with Estimation of Probabilities; Gambler's Fallacy and Statistical Independence; Loss Aversion in Project Management; Risks vs. Opportunities; IV Choice Engineering; 12 The Power of Adaptation; Processes Are Always Changing; What Is Adaptive Management?; How Adaptive Management Works