Project management: does creating a deliverable cloud our judgement of its value?
A project team often understands the strengths of its own work better than anyone else, but that familiarity does not guarantee impartiality. When selecting a procedure, interface or prototype, how can managers distinguish its usefulness from its creators’ attachment to it?
What the literature establishes
Michael I. Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely (2012, Journal of Consumer Psychology) show, in experiments involving assembled or handmade objects, that taking part in production can increase the value people attach to the result. This “IKEA effect” is not simply a preference for customised features. In their experiments, successful completion plays an important role: effort that does not lead to completion does not produce the same effect.
Ownership also changes valuation
Daniel Kahneman, Jack L. Knetsch and Richard H. Thaler (1990, Journal of Political Economy) show that simply receiving a good can create a gap between the price people demand to give it up and the price others are willing to pay to acquire it. This endowment effect is distinct from the effect of making something. Nevertheless, both findings invite managers to examine whether “ownership” of a solution influences its evaluation, rather than assuming that everyone spontaneously assigns it the same value.
The premature conclusion
Concluding that creators should be excluded from evaluation would go too far. Their experience can reveal constraints, maintenance options or risks that an external evaluator may miss. The safeguard is instead to separate their factual contribution from the final judgement of usefulness, without treating past effort as evidence of value for the user. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these findings do not demonstrate
These experiments do not directly examine deliverable selection in projects in Berne. They neither quantify local overvaluation nor establish that creators’ preferences are necessarily biased. External evaluation is not infallible either: without a usage scenario and shared criteria, it may simply replace one preference with another.
A practical check in Berne
For SHR’s Project Management programme, an exercise applicable in Berne would compare creators’ assessments with those of future users working through the same scenario: a federal administration procedure, public health guidance, a telecoms interface or an inspection instruction in precision manufacturing. Before the demonstration, set an observable criterion — for example, completing the task without assistance — and then collect creators’ and users’ assessments separately. Next, record the proportion of users who succeed without help and compare that result with the initial assessments. A discrepancy would not prove an IKEA effect, but it would make the distinction between claimed value and observed usefulness open to verification. To go further: explore the Project Management training in Bern in the canton of Bern, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Project Management in Bern
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