Psychological Aspects to project planning failures

“You want the flight attendant, not the pilot, to be an optimist”

You want hard-nose analysis when planning a project, not unbounded optimism¹.

• One common problem is a rush to commit to the first suitable option rather than evaluating all potential options¹.
• Lock in occurs when the organization acts as though the path or option they chose is the only way to proceed¹.
• Prematurely locking in is what the author calls the “commitment fallacy”¹.
• Unchecked optimism and snap judgments lead to poorly scoped projects¹.
• “planning fallacy” - common underestimation of time required to complete tasks even in the face of conflicting information¹.
• Tendency to picture the best-case scenario as the best-guess scenario¹.
• “bias for action” - action weighs heavy on decision makers, and they tend not value planning particularly in the face of progress.¹.
• “sunk cost fallacy”¹.
• Don’t assume you know all there is to know¹.
  • What you see is all there is (WYSIATI) fallacy¹.

1. Flyvbjerg, B. & Gardner, D. How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between. (Currency, New York, 2023).