The role of decision makers’ use of visualizations in project portfolio decision making

Visualizations are increasingly used to display data for project portfolio decision making. Such decisions support the delivery of organizational strategy and aim to enhance the overall outcome from project investments. While some studies show that visualizations help data interpretation, others suggest they might bias decisions. To better understand whether and how visualizations affect project portfolio decisions, we develop and test a conceptual model that emphasizes the role of the decision maker in interpreting and using visual data. Using a dual-informant sample of 138 firms, we show a positive relationship between decision makers’ use of visualizations and project portfolio success that is mediated by decision-making success. We draw upon theories of cognitive fit and cognitive load to explain how the relationship between the use of visualizations and decision-making success is influenced by both the decision maker's tendency to use heuristics and their familiarity with visualizations.     

Exploring the roles of portfolio steering committees in project portfolio governance

Governing project portfolios engages different actors in organizations including portfolio managers, portfolio officers, top managers, and others who may team up as portfolio steering committees. While portfolio steering committees play a regular role in project portfolio governance, their role is still unclear. Through an in-depth multiple case study in three Danish companies, the roles of portfolio steering committees were explored. The results showed that portfolio committees may play three distinct roles in portfolio governance: a) communication and consolidation role, b) negotiation role, and c) decision making role. The results challenged the notion that portfolio committee meetings are the place and time to make collective decisions on the portfolio, rather, portfolio steering committees might unintentionally become or intentionally be used for other purposes than decision making. The empirical evidence of the study proposes that these three roles might be related to two governance design factors: frequency and duration of committee meetings.     

Understanding project interdependencies: The role of visual representation,culture and process

Project portfolio management is central to many organizations' strategic processes and requires consideration of multiple factors and the ability to envision alternative future consequences to support strategic project portfolio decision making. Complex project portfolios with multiple project interdependencies are characteristic of many project environments, yet existing methods do not provide the clear understanding of project interdependencies that is required.     

The use of effectuation in projects: The influence of business case control,portfolio monitoring intensity and project innovativeness

Project management approaches are evolving to be more flexible and adaptive to meet the challenges associated with an increasingly complex and dynamic environment. However, potential changes in the underpinning logic supporting project decision making have scarcely been considered. We investigate the role of effectuation, a decision logic most commonly associated with entrepreneurship, as an alternative decision-making approach to the rational ‘causation’ logic that has traditionally underpinned project management processes. We develop and test a model to explore the portfolio- and project-level influences on the application of effectuation in project management. We find that portfolio governance mechanisms related to business case use and portfolio monitoring inhibit the use of effectuation, while project innovativeness is associated with increased use of effectuation. The paper contributes to research and practice by empirically investigating the antecedents to the use of effectuation decision-making logic in project and portfolio management through a multi-level model.     

Project portfolio management in practice and in context

Companies struggle with the sub-optimization and changes among their projects, even if various normative instructions and good practices have been introduced for project portfolio management. At the center of this paper is the need to understand project portfolio management in practice and in context. The purpose is to report a review on recent empirical research literature regarding project portfolio management, to draw attention to the limitations with viewing portfolio management as a rational decision process, and to develop new avenues for research regarding project portfolio management in practice and in context. As a result, this paper shows that, to respond to uncertainties and complexities in business environments, project portfolio management can be viewed as negotiation and bargaining and as structural reconfiguration, besides rational decision processes. These alternative perspectives offer new insight into the dilemmas identified in day-to-day project portfolio management and open up avenues for resolving them, thereby promoting success in project portfolio management.     

Analysing decision variables that influence preliminary feasibility studies using data mining techniques

The development of infrastructure contributes to the social and economic improvement of a country, and generally requires huge and immediate investments. To decide on appropriate infrastructure projects, many countries use preliminary feasibility studies (PFS). However, a preliminary feasibility study takes a relatively long time to complete. During this time, decision‐making parameters such as the estimated project cost as well as the project environment may change. To identify the decision parameters that affect the feasibility analysis, data mining techniques are applied to analyse the Go/No Go decision‐making process in infrastructure projects. The data mining analysis uses PFS data obtained from large‐scale infrastructure projects in Korea. Classification models found 57 hidden rules in the PFS. Prediction models were also developed for Go/No Go decision making using an artificial neural network (ANN) and logistic regression analysis. In order to validate the results, the study evaluated the accuracies and errors of both the classification and the prediction model.     

浅析通信工程项目管理系统集成服务

从决策支持、核心网络平台建设、空间数据基础设施建设、综合决策层建设方面对如何实现通信工程的信息化和综合集成化进行了探讨,并总结了系统的实现方法及特点,以期提高通信工程项目管理系统信息化建设和发展水平。     

Visual representation of construction management data

Construction projects are associated with voluminous and often unstructured data sets, generated in support of construction management functions. Project managers face the challenge of making meaningful deductions from this data. A central contribution of this paper is that visual analytics can provide a means of analyzing data from various dimensions of a project to extract information in aid of decision making and helping to explain reasons for performance to date. Questions posed relate to the role of visual analytics in the execution and post-construction phases of a project, data representations and transformations of specific interest, and the kinds of visual representations and interactions that provide useful insights to management personnel, help explain performance, or assist with communication. Principles of designing effective visual analytics solutions for various construction management functions and applicable to the associated analytic reasoning tasks, data representations and transformations, and visual representations including relevant interaction features are described. Emphasis is placed on the choice of visual representations along with discussion of approaches for validating the usefulness of the visual analytics solutions proposed. The notion of context dimensions and performance dimensions for representing construction projects is introduced as part of the formulation of visual representation designs. To demonstrate the application of the concepts presented, data sets from two different projects were used to produce visual representations helpful for analytical reasoning about change order management data. A detailed assessment is given of several of the images presented in terms of strengths and weaknesses, and interaction features desired. The findings of the paper in terms of principles, concepts and lessons learned should prove helpful to those wishing to apply visual analytics to a broad range of construction management functions.     

基于在险价值的房地产项目组合管理的风险平衡研究

对房地产企业而言,在多项目管理的环境中,有效的项目组合管理对企业工程项目管理有着关键性的作用。引入实物期权来衡量房地产项目在投资决策阶段的价值,用蒙特卡洛模拟得出项目实物期权价值的概率分布;并引入风险价值的概念,在VaR、CVaR 的基础上,针对项目的实物期权价值提出了在险实物期权价值、条件在险实物期权价值（RoVaR和C-RoVaR）来衡量房地产项目的风险。建立了项目组合平衡模型,用来描述合适的潜在投资项目来平衡目前项目组合的风险,对投资决策提供支持,同时概括了项目组合平衡的基本步骤。     

ConSERV, a project specific risk management concept

Managing risks in design intensive multi-disciplinary capital projects presents unique problems for decision makers within the project environment. Existing risk management tools, tend to employ axiomatic software and as such do not provide any intelligent risk management capability or lead to better informed decision making processes. ConSERV is being developed as a comprehensive project management methodology able to extract project specific risk issues throughout the project life cycle and apply experiential knowledge by using a knowledge-based system to assist in the management of them. A visual representation of the project risks is obtained by employing a more practical non probabilistic approach. ConSERV will provide project managers with on line decision support, at key stages of the project to assist in the management and control of the project specific risks identified.     

Traversing and querying constraint driven temporal networks to estimate construction contingencies

Effective estimation of possible project futures is crucial to the success of construction projects. The focus of this paper is identifying and classifying possible construction crisis scenarios using an interactive simulation. We present a mathematical representation of construction processes, with foundations in temporal constraint networks, that can be used to infer alternative futures of a project as it unfolds. We present algorithms that can traverse the network in time, reason about the constraints driving the construction project, and present the combinatorial possibilities of futures that can emerge from one or more constraint violations during project implementation. The graphical depictions of the traversal results will aid construction managers in anticipating and reacting to crisis scenarios as they evolve in time. We present a case study and illustrate how the proposed algorithms can be used to represent and model uncertainty and estimate contingencies in construction projects. This research is part of a broader framework that integrates construction education, the study of expert decision making, and intelligent decision making aids.     

Selection of maintenance,renewal and improvement projects in rail lines using the analytic network process

This paper addresses one of the most common problems that a railway infrastructure manager has to face: to prioritise a portfolio of maintenance, renewal and improvement (MR&I) projects in a railway network. This decision-making problem is complex due to the large number of MR&I projects in the portfolio and the different criteria to take into consideration, most of which are influenced and interrelated to each other. To address this problem, the use of the analytic network process (ANP) is proposed. The method is applied to a case study in which the Local Manager of the public company, who is responsible for the MR&I of Spanish Rail Lines, has to select the MR&I projects which have to be executed first. Based on the results, it becomes evident that, for this case study, the main factor of preference for a project is the location of application rather than the type of project. The main contributions of this work are: the deep analysis done to identify and weigh the decision criteria, how to assess the alternatives and provide a rigorous and systematic decision-making process, based on an exhaustive revision of the literature and expertise.     

Project management decisions with multiple fuzzy goals

In real‐world situations, the project managers must handle conflicting goals that govern the use of the resources within organizations. These conflicting goals must are required to be optimized simultaneously by the project managers in the framework of fuzzy aspiration levels. The multiple fuzzy goals programming model proposed herein helps project managers to minimize project total costs, total completion time, and total crashing costs considering direct costs, indirect costs, contractual penalty costs, duration of activities and total budget constraint. A numerical example illustrates the feasibility of applying the proposed model to a project management decision problem. Consequently, the proposed model yields an efficient compromise solution and the decision maker's overall degree of satisfaction with determined multiple fuzzy goals values. Moreover, the proposed model effectively provides a systematic decision‐making framework, enabling a decision maker to interactively modify the fuzzy data and model parameters until a satisfactory solution is obtained. The significant characteristics that differentiate the proposed model from the other models include flexible decision‐making processes, multiple objective functions, and wide‐ranging decision information.     

Speeding up decision-making in project environment: The effects of decision makers' collaboration network dynamics

Faced with continuously changing project environments, organizations need to not only make the right decisions but also make decisions in a timely manner. This study investigates the determinants of timely decision-making from the perspective of collaboration network dynamics. From the archival data recordings of the decision-making meetings of Program N, a national water transfer program, the meeting-based collaboration relationships of the decision makers were identified. Cox regression was employed to explore the effects of collaboration network dynamics on the time needed to reach a decision. The results suggest that stronger previous collaboration relationships and more centralized social capital distribution in decisions groups contribute to more timely decision-making. These findings substantiate social network theories in a real-world collaborative decision-making setting and reveal the facilitators of timely project decisions. The practical implication for project decision management is that the recruitment of a decision-making group should be based on not only the decision makers' technical expertise but also their collaboration network dynamics.     

A decision-making framework for justifying a portfolio of IT projects

This paper presents a comprehensive decision-making framework for evaluating a portfolio of IT projects. A problem of IT project selection with and without project interdependencies is considered. The problem is subject to maximum project funding budget constraint. When IT project portfolio contains independent projects, a dynamic programming (DP) solution procedure is proposed to efficiently solve the portfolio of IT projects' problem. However, when IT project portfolio contains project interdependencies, a mixed integer programming (MIP) approach is needed to solve the problem optimally. Experiments and results using simulated data using Monte Carlo simulation are provided. The results indicate that a large set of project selection problems containing up to 60 projects can be solved easily using the proposed decision-making framework.     

An expert-simulation system for construction productivity forecasting

Knowledge based and neural network systems provide an interesting new tool for dealing with uncertainty in decision making. The authors discuss the different sources of uncertainty for a construction planning expert system and show how the results (output) from the expert system can be used to estimate operation or project durations.     

The multiplicity of value in the front-end of projects: The case of London transportation infrastructure

There is growing interest in the ways that value is understood in the context of projects and within project-based settings. Recent studies emphasise the multiplicity of project value in various project settings as perceived by different project actors. Drawing on previous work on project value and project front-end, this study expands on the idea of multiplicity of project value in the early project definition phase. To this end, the study draws from empirical data on infrastructure projects provision, including semi-structured interviews with a set of highly experienced and senior level informants with extensive knowledge and familiarity of infrastructure project planning and front-end decision making. The study is bounded with a focus on London, UK as an example of a complex, highly established global city with a great reliance on its infrastructure and a well-established projects ecology. Through inductive qualitative data analysis the study explores the role of infrastructure projects as solutions to policy problems, the multiple and complex nature of value in project definition and identifies three value levels, which are instrumental for project definition: local value, sector value and user value. The multi-level value framework in the project front-end extends and complements early decision making in planning and setting up of infrastructure projects.     

Antithetic Method‐Based Particle Swarm Optimization for a Queuing Network Problem with Fuzzy Data in Concrete Transportation Systems

The aim of this article is to develop an antithetic method‐based particle swarm optimization to solve a queuing network problem with fuzzy data for concrete transportation systems. The concrete transportation system at the Jinping‐I Hydropower Project is considered the prototype and is extended to a generalized queuing network problem. The decision maker needs to allocate a limited number of vehicles and unloading equipment in multiple stages to the different queuing network transportation paths to improve construction efficiency by minimizing both the total operational costs and the construction duration. A multiple objective decision‐making model is established which takes into account the constraints and the fuzzy data. To deal with the fuzzy variables in the model, a fuzzy expected value operator, which uses an optimistic–pessimistic index, is introduced to reflect the decision maker's attitude. The particular nature of this model requires the development of an antithetic method‐based particle swarm optimization algorithm. Instead of using a traditional updating method, an antithetic particle‐updating mechanism is designed to automatically control the particle‐updating in the feasible solution space. Results and a sensitivity analysis for the Jinping‐I Hydropower Project are presented to demonstrate the performance of our optimization method, which was proved to be very effective and efficient compared to the actual data from the project and other metaheuristic algorithms.     

Examining the role of transformational leadership of portfolio managers in project performance

Research into the role of transformational leadership in project based organisations has generally focused on project managers or senior managers and less so on portfolio managers who oversee multiple projects to achieve business objectives. This study examines the impact of transformational leadership behaviour of portfolio managers on project performance directly and indirectly through other intervening variables such as climate for innovation and innovation championing. Using a questionnaire survey, data were obtained from 112 project managers in a UK project based organisation. Transformational leadership behaviour of portfolio managers was found to have a positive and significant relationship with project performance. Innovation championing and climate for innovation both partially mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and project performance. The study confirms the importance of portfolio managers in enhancing project performance and identifies the need for project based organisations to cultivate transformational leadership behaviour among them for enhanced performance. It also highlights the need for further exploration of the role of portfolio managers in improving project performance.