Conclusions: Picking the Selection Approach That Is Right for You

What can we conclude from this discussion of project-selection methods? The first and most important message must relate to the intent we have when deciding how to select a project. Are we consistent and objective with regard to the various alternatives? I have been involved in a consulting and training capacity with a number of firms that expressed severe problems in project selection; in short, they kept picking losers. Why was this the case? One obvious reason that became increasingly clear was that they did not even attempt objectivity in their selection. Projects that were sacred cows or the pet idea of a senior manager were pushed to the head of the line or worse, had their financial assumptions repeatedly "tweaked" until they gave the correct information. In this manner, projects that the majority of the team knew in advance would fail were initiated because they had been massaged to the point that they ostensibly optimized the selection criteria. The key lies in being honest with the selection process. If we continue to operate in a "GIGO" (garbage-in/garbage-out) mode, we are just kidding ourselves.

A second conclusion suggests that some projects require sophisticated financial evidence of their viability. Others may only need to demonstrate an acceptable profile relative to other options. In other words, any of the previously discussed selection methods may be appropriate under certain circumstances. Some authors have pushed strongly for weighted scoring models similar to method two, the simple scoring model described earlier in the lesson (Meredith and Mantel, 2000). They argue that these models offer a more accurate reflection of the strategic goals of a firm without sacrificing long-term effectiveness for short-term financial goals. Further, they suggest that it is important not to exclude these non-financial criteria from the decision modeling process. Perhaps the key lies in creating a selection algorithm that is sufficiently broad to encompass both financial and non-financial considerations. Regardless of the approach a company selects, we do know one thing for sure: making good project choices is a first and vital step in ensuring good project management downstream.

We have now reached the end of Lesson 2. By now, you should have a clearer understanding of strategy choices and methods with regard to selecting projects and managing stakeholders effectively. You should also have completed your reading assignment as specified on your syllabus. At this time, return to your syllabus and complete any activities for this lesson. In the next lesson, we turn to life cycle management of projects.

References

• Block, R. (1983). The Politics of Projects. New York, NY: Yourdon Press.
• Cleland, D. I. (1988). Project stakeholder management. In Cleland, D. I., and King, W. R. (Eds.), Project Management Handbook (2nd Ed.) (pp. 275-301). New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
• Cleland, D. I. (1996). The Strategic Management of Teams. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.
• Cleland, D. I. (1998). Strategic project management. In Pinto, J. K. (Ed.), Project Management Handbook (pp. 27-40). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• David, F. R. (2001). Strategic Management (8th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
• Dill, W. R. (1958). Environment as an influence on managerial autonomy. Administrative Science Quarterly, 3, 409-443.
• Doran, G. T. (1981, November). There's a smart way to write management goals and objectives. Management Review, 35-36.
• Fisher, R., and Ury, W. (1981). Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.
• Frame, J. D. (1987). Managing Projects in Organizations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• Gaddis, P. O. (1959). The project manager. Harvard Business Review, 37, 89-97.
• Grundy, T. (1998). Strategy implementation and project management. International Journal of Project Management, 16(1), 43-50.
• Mendelow, A. (1986). Stakeholder analysis for strategic planning and implementation. In King, W. R., and Cleland, D. I. (Eds.), Strategic Planning and Management Handbook (pp. 176-191). New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
• Smith, D. K. and Alexander, R. C. (1988). Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer. New York, NY: MacMillan.
• Weiner, E., and Brown, A. (1986). Stakeholder analysis for effective issues management. Planning Review, 36, 27-31.

Additional Readings

• Biddle, F. M. (1997, October 23). Boeing plans $1.6 billion pretax charge--Output bottlenecks cited. Wall Street Journal, 1.
• Gareis, R., Huemann, M., and Schaden, B. (1998). Best PM practice: Benchmarking of project management processes. In Hauc, A., et. al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 14th World Congress on Project Management (pp. 799-808). Ljubljana, Slovenia.
• Kharbanda, O. P. and Pinto, J. K. (1996). What Made Gertie Gallop? Lessons From Project Failure. New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
• Lee, H. L. and Billington, C. (1993). Material management in decentralized supply chains. Operations Research, 41(5), 835-847.
• Pinto, J. K. and Rouhiainen, P. (2001). Building Customer-Based Project Organizations. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.
• Pinto, J. K., Rouhiainen, P., and Trailer, J. W. (1998). Customer-based project success: Exploring a key to gaining competitive advantage in project organizations. Project Management, 4(1), 6-11.
• Porter, M. (1985). Competitive Advantage. New York, NY: The Free Press.
• Sheridan , J. H. (1999, September 6). Managing the value chain for growth. Industry Week, 50-66.
• Thomas, D. J. and Griffin, P. M. (1996). Coordinated supply chain management. European Journal of Operational Research, 94, 1-15.
• Towill, D. R. (1996). Industrial dynamics modeling of supply chains. Logistics Information Management, 9(4), 43-56.