BUSI 680 Week 2 Group DB Forum 1 Reply Example

Group Discussion Board Forum 1: Group Reply

BUSI 680 Advanced Project Management I, Group Discussion Board Forum 1: Collaborative Group Reply

Thread by [Student Name]

The group, its members' organizations and the thread being answered are composites standing in for the course's own; the textbook, Scripture and research cited are real, and the requirements follow Liberty's public course guide for BUSI 680.

Group Reply

Our group's four threads reached the same conclusion from different directions: a project that meets its schedule and budget can still fail if it does not deliver the benefits that justified it. Dana's water main program, Luis's warehouse software rollout, Grace's clinic expansion and Ben's product launch all made that point. Chapter 2 of Larson and Gray (2018) pushes the question one step earlier. If success depends on benefits, then much of a project's success or failure is decided when it is selected, long before a project manager is assigned.

Larson and Gray (2018) argue that projects should be selected through a priority system tied to the organization's strategy, using both financial and nonfinancial criteria. Research on portfolio management supports that advice. Cooper et al. (1999) studied portfolio management practices in 205 U.S. companies, examining which methods businesses used, how satisfied they were and what results they achieved. Their work found that businesses relied heavily on financial methods but that the best-performing businesses tended to use strategic approaches and multiple methods rather than financial calculations alone. In Ben's company, where projects are ranked only by projected return, that finding suggests adding explicit strategic criteria to the ranking.

The deeper problem is that projected returns are usually too optimistic. Kahneman and Lovallo (1993) observed that people deciding about a venture usually see it as one of a kind and to build forecasts from the inside, reasoning from this project's own plan, when the more reliable route is to look outward at how comparable efforts actually turned out. Flyvbjerg (2006) applied this insight to project management, attributing inaccurate forecasts to optimism bias and strategic misrepresentation and proposing a remedy he calls reference class forecasting: estimate a new project from the recorded outcomes of a set of finished projects like it. A business case written only from its own plan is an argument, not a forecast. Grace's clinic could have used her health system's last five clinic openings as a reference class before projecting patient volumes. Her thread noted that the new clinic reached its projected visit numbers eighteen months later than planned; the earlier openings, had anyone looked, showed a similar ramp-up period.

Scripture teaches a similar humility. Proverbs observes that a person plans a course in the heart, but it is the Lord who establishes the steps (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Proverbs 16:9). That proverb does not discourage planning; it reminds planners that their plans are not the final word. For a selection committee, it suggests holding projections loosely, expecting surprises and building in review points where a project can be redirected or stopped when evidence changes. A selection process that checks optimistic projections against history practices that humility in organizational form.

Our group would therefore recommend three changes for any of our organizations: score proposed projects against stated strategic criteria as well as financial returns, require each business case to compare its estimates with a reference class of similar past projects and revisit selected projects at defined gates to confirm that the expected benefits still hold.

References

Cooper, R. G., Edgett, S. J., & Kleinschmidt, E. J. (1999). New product portfolio management: Practices and performance. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 16(4), 333-351. https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-5885.1640333

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Flyvbjerg, B. (2006). From Nobel Prize to project management: Getting risks right. Project Management Journal, 37(3), 5-15. https://doi.org/10.1177/875697280603700302

Kahneman, D., & Lovallo, D. (1993). Timid choices and bold forecasts: A cognitive perspective on risk taking. Management Science, 39(1), 17-31. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.39.1.17

Larson, E. W., & Gray, C. F. (2018). Project management: The managerial process (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.