INNOVATIONS AND INSIGHTS
MAKING DECISIONS IN FAST PACED PROJECTS
Source: AIPM
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In 2020, there is growing expectation that information is available instantaneously and status updates should be near real-time. With more tools at our disposal and this growing expectation for speed and agility, project managers are facing more pressure to make rapid decisions, even when the available information is based on incomplete data or a lot of assumptions. The pressure from senior stakeholders to “get it right” has placed decisionmaking skills squarely under the spotlight. We’ve all seen examples of a single poor decision that can have very high costs and may even be the difference between success and failure for your project and even, your career. Decisions hinge on a culmination of subject matter knowledge, previous experience and access to information, data quality considerations and risk tolerance. It could be said that decision making is the ultimate juggling act of assessments that go beyond just gathering facts, but are also influenced by innately human characteristics that can change based on feelings or intuition. With so many variables to manage, it’s extremely challenging for decision makers to produce consistently good results, let alone do so under
