Project management: are options compared using all the relevant information?

When choosing a provider, a technical solution or a pilot site, project managers generally bring several functions together. The useful question is precise: how can they prevent the comparison from relying mainly on information that everyone already has?

What the literature establishes

Garold Stasser and William Titus (1985, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) studied group decisions in which participants held a mixture of shared and unique information. In their experimental setting, discussion favoured shared information and could lead the group to choose an option that was less favourable when all available evidence was considered. Bringing information holders together was therefore not enough to ensure that their knowledge was pooled.

Why shared information takes centre stage

Garold Stasser and William Titus (1987, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) examined how information load and the proportion of shared information affected the dissemination of unique information during discussion. The sampling mechanism matters: information known to several people has several opportunities to be introduced, unlike information held by just one person. Yet repetition does not provide additional evidence of its relevance to the choice.

The premature conclusion

One might conclude that new information should always take precedence, or that each specialist should be asked to defend a preferred option. That would confuse the availability of an item with its value: unique information may be uncertain, peripheral or already outdated. The aim is to make evidence accessible before evaluating it, not to reward novelty. (our executive and employee training programmes)

What the evidence cannot promise

These experiments involve controlled tasks, a structured distribution of information and an option identifiable as the best on the evidence provided. Real projects also involve contested criteria, evolving knowledge and confidentiality constraints. The studies support careful attention to what is actually examined, but do not establish that a preliminary form would, by itself, improve every project decision.

A practical check in Bâle

Within SHR’s “Project Management” programme, an exercise applicable in Basel would be to prepare the selection of a provider for a project connecting pharma, life sciences, Rhine logistics and international R&D. Before the discussion, each function would separately record facts that could change the comparison, their sources and the relevant option, subject to confidentiality rules. After the decision, the team would measure the proportion of facts initially supplied by only one function that received explicit treatment in the comparison matrix: included, excluded with a reason, or marked for verification. Checked by comparing the initial contributions with the final matrix, this measure would indicate information coverage, not yet the quality of the choice. To go further: explore the Project Management training in Basel in the canton of Basel-Stadt, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.

In pictures: Project Management in Basel

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