The Break Down Happens Quietly: Why IT Projects Stall at Scale Most large IT projects don’t unravel because the idea was wrong. They fail because execution weakens as complexity increases—often long after leadership believes the project is “on track.” That reality is well documented in Harvard Business Review's...
Bent Flyvbjerg knows a thing or two about project inefficiency. As an Oxford University professor and economic geographer, Flyvbjerg studies the role that big projects play in shaping and changing cities — and why so many of those projects run over budget, over time, or...
Why Megaprojects Fail and What We Can Do About It Megaprojects shape nations. They deliver large-scale transport infrastructures, energy systems, defence capabilities, hospitals, and cities. They consume billions of pounds of public money and involve thousands of organisations and people. And yet, despite decades of experience,...
Managing a project can feel like a juggling act. There are many variables to work with and tasks to complete and you are required to keep most of them at the top of your mind. You will also need to make notable and impactful adjustments...
Classic Mistakes Analysis of the examples in the “Catalogue of catastrophe” reveals the most common mistakes. Given the frequency of occurrence, these mistakes can be considered the “classic mistakes”. The following list outlines the most common themes and provides links to examples; The underestimation of complexity, cost and/or...
Behavioural Patterns When failure occurs it is sometimes due to a single mistakes made in planning or executing the project. More often than not however, failure is the cumulative result of many mistakes. In such situations the mistakes are themselves often born out of a dysfunctional...
A study of more than 100 years of infrastructure megaprojects reveals a consistent pattern of challenges at their core. 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 by Bent Flyvbjerg...
Top Ten Behavioral Biases in Project Management: An Overview Abstract Behavioral science has witnessed an explosion in the number of biases identified by behavioral scientists, to more than 200 at present. This article identifies the 10 most important behavioral biases for project management. First, we argue it...
The Five Things You Should Know about [hashtag#Programme and hashtag#Project] Cost Overrun by Prof. Bent Flyvbjerg, Atif Ansar, Alexander Budzier, Søren Buhl, Chantal Cantarelli, Massimo Garbuio, Carsten Glenting, Mette Skamris Holm, Dan Lovallo, Daniel Lunn, Eric Molin, Arne Rønnest, Allison Stewart and Bert van Wee. Make...
