Top Ten Behavioral Biases in Project Management
Abstract
According to the PMBOK guide, project management can be defined as the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements (Project Management Institute, 2021, p. 4). This definition places a large responsibility on the cognition of a project manager to ensure success. Bent Flyvbjerg’s article Top Ten Behavioral Biases in Project Management: An overview (2021) challenges the rationality of decision making, as he highlights cognitive and political biases that can have a great significance on project management. This wiki article presents the 10 behavioral biases identified by Flyvbjerg, the applications aimed at reducing the impact of biases in project management, and limitations to the view on planning and uncertainty proposed in the article. The content of this wiki article includes:
Background • Uncertainty and planning in project management standards. • An introduction to bias in behavioral science with a focus on Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s contributions. • A distinction between three different types of biases: behavioral-, cognitive- and political biases.
Top ten behavioral biases in project management and their impact on project management • Strategic misrepresentation • Optimism bias • Uniqueness bias • Planning fallacy • Overconfidence bias • Hindsight bias • Availability bias • Base rate fallacy • Anchoring • Escalation of commitment
Application • The distinction between political and cognitive bias and the impact on project management. • Reference class forecasting (Flyvbjerg, 2006) as a method for mitigating the impact of optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation.
Limitations • Bent Flyvbjerg’s emphasis on political biases in project underperformance vs. Kahneman and Tversky’s focus on cognitive biases. • Uncertainty explained by behavioral biases versus conventional theories of uncertainty. • Albert O. Hirshmans notion of the hiding hand in contrast to Bent Flyvbjerg’s emphasis on planning fallacy (Kreiner, 2020).
Annotated bibliography
Key References Descriptions
Flyvbjerg, B. (2021). Top Ten Behavioral Biases in Project Management: An Overview. Project Management Journal, Volume 52, Issue 6, December 2021, Pages 531-546
An article identifying the ten most important biases for project management, their impact on project management, and a reflection on what can be done to mitigate the effects, thus heighten the chances of successful management.
Project Management Institute (2021). The standard for project management and a guide to the project management body
of knowledge (PMBOK guide). Seventh edition. Newtown Square, Pennsylvania: Project Management Institute, Inc A collection of fundamental concepts and constructs of the project management profession, divided into 12 principles of project management and eight project performance domains.
Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science, New Series, Vol. 185, No. 4157. (Sep. 27, 1974), pp. 1124-1131. A walkthrough of three types of heuristics employed to assess probabilities and the biases that occur in decision making as a result.
Flyvbjerg, B. (2006) From Nobel Prize to Project Management: Getting Risk Right. A new approach to mitigating risk in forecasting projects, focusing on anylysing a group of similar projects as preparation.
Kreiner, K. (2020). Conflicting Notions of a Project: The Battle Between Albert O. Hirschman and Bent Flyvbjerg. Project Management Journal, 51(4), 400-410. https://doi.org/10.1177/8756972820930535.
A discussion of Albert O. Hirshman’s notion of the Hiding Hand and Bent Flyvbjerg’s critique on this academic imposition. The Hiding Hand is an idea centered around the belief that it is impossible to know about the future of projects, and one therefore should engage with invalidly premised projects.
