Evaluating management of large, complex projects: A framework for analysis

Abstract

Increasingly owners and managers of large, complex projects are challenged in law suits and regulatory proceedings to justify their decisions. These challenges often question the prudence or reasonableness of management actions on a project costing substantially more than its original estimate. Frequently these attacks criticize decisions made years earlier by project owners or managers. This article describes a framework for evaluating management prudence based on the author's 20 years of research and personal experience with large, complex projects. The framework distinguishes between evaluations to determine prudent/imprudent management, and conventional “lessons learned” management audits. The author concludes that, while hindsight knowledge is a useful ingredient in “lessons learned” audits, it usually provides misleading signals for a management audit to determine prudence or imprudence. He concludes that any finding of management imprudence must meet the eight criteria described in the framework.