ProjectThink: Why Good Managers Make Poor Project Choices

Hardcover, xiv + 235 pages, NOT ex-library. Fine interior, clean and bright throughout with unmarked text, firmly bound. Boards show edgewear (a puncture on lower edge of rear panel, a touch of scuffing, short creases). Issued without a dust jacket. -- Contents: Test Your Judgment; Answers to Judgment Test; I. Why Do Good Managers Make Poor Project Decisions 1 Mental Errors in Project Management [Power of Misplaced Perception; Why Do We Make Irrational Choices; Mental Errors in Project Management; Mental Errors or Intention; Why Is Recognizing and Dealing with Mental Errors so Difficult] 2 Analysis vs. Mental Errors [Why Don't People Perform Even a Simple Analysis; Overconfidence; Confirmation Bias; Optimism Bias; Analysis Is Not Trivial; What Is the Value of the Analysis] 3 Choice Engineering [Processes vs Mental Errors; What Is Choice Engineering; Policing vs Choice Engineering; When Policing Is Necessary; A Few Ideas Behind Choice Engineering]; II. Travel Inside a Project Manager's Mind 4 Memory & Project Mental Errors [Memory Errors in Project Management; What Is a Memory; Reconstructive Memory; How Memories Are Created; How to Improve Your Ability to Memorize; Do Memory Exercises Actually Work; Using Choice Engineering to Mitigate Memory Errors] 5 Emotions in Project Management [Head-butt Felt Around the World; Our Emotional Choices Often are Not the Best Ones; Emotional Intelligence; How to Become Emotionally Intelligent: A Choice Engineering Approach] 6 Behavioral Traps [Sunk Cost; Time Bombs; Prudence Traps; Collective Traps] 7 Heuristics & Biases [How Project Managers Became Gamblers; Availability Heuristic; Anchoring; Representativeness & Stereotypes; Some Other Heuristics and Biases] 8 What Makes Your Project Team Happy [Why Are We Talking About Happiness in Project Management; Why Did Eliot Spitzer Do It; Why Some People Are Happier Than Others; Habituation; Why Time Seems to Pass More Quickly as We Age; Managing Exceptions; How Happy Are You in Your Project Team]; III. Project Analysis vs Mental Errors 9 How to Process Project Information [My Dentist Has a Very Nice Website; All Marketers Are Liars; Time Zone Trick in Project Management; Peak-end Rule; Filtering Information for Your Project; I Did Not Read This Book, But I Know I Do Not Like It; Any Suggestions About What to Do] 10 An Expected Value Manifesto [How to Win a Lottery; How Project Managers Ignore Expected Value; Incorrect Probability & Incorrect Expected Value; How to Choose a Scenario Based on Multiple Conflicting Objectives] 11 Project Risks and Mental Errors [Which Risk Is the Most Dangerous; Are You Afraid of Falling Asteroids; What is Risk Attitude; Why People Have Different Attitudes Towards Risk; Paradoxes with Estimation of Probabilities; Gambler's Fallacy & Statistical Independence; Loss Aversion in Project Management; Risks vs Opportunities]; IV. Choice Engineering 12 Power of Adaptation [Processes Are Always Changing; What Is Adaptive Management; How Adaptive Management Works; Barriers to the Acceptance of Adaptive Management; Tendency to Be Consistent; Status Quo Bias] 13 What to Do About Risks [Make It Simple; Strategies for Dealing with Risks; How to Build a Rocket or Risk Ranking; Should We Protect Commercial Airplanes Against Surface-to-Air Missile Attacks by Terrorists; Zero-risk Bias; Risk Engineering; When Quantitative Risk Analysis is Necessary] 14 Choice Engineering for Organizations [Are You Borg; Don't Be Evil!; Disclosure Therapy; What to Do to Make Your Team, Your Clients, and Your Boss Happy; What to Do to Make Yourself Happy & Spread the Virus of Happiness]; Conclusions; Appendix A: 14 Defenses against Project Illusions; App.B: Heuristics, Biases, Traps, and Other Psychological Effects in Project Management; App.C: Risk & Decision Analysis Software; App.D: Professional Associations, Societies, and Groups in the Area of Risk and Decision Analysis; App.E: Decision and Risk Analysis Journals; References; Index.…