• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Project Management Knowledge

Simply explained by a PMI-certified Project Manager

  • Home
  • Acronyms and Abbreviations
  • Definitions
  • About the Author
  • Deutsch
  • Show Search
Hide Search
You are here: Home / Definitions / D / Decision-Making Techniques

Decision-Making Techniques

Decision making is used in all aspects of project management for example approval of a business case, evaluating proposed solutions, choosing a vendor or resources to work on a project, mitigating risks and approval of change requests. The decisions that are made have wide-ranging effects on the project and can mean the difference between success and failure.

There isn’t one single Decision-Making Technique that can be applied to all decisions made on a project, instead, there are a variety of techniques that can be used. Choosing the correct technique is as important as the outcome of the decision-making process. Having access to many different techniques will allow a project manager to choose the appropriate one for the decision that is being made.

For example, using Decision Making Techniques for choosing team members to work on a project could be based on the following criteria:

  • The skills, knowledge and experience of a candidate
  • Available at the times required by the project
  • Whether the cost will fit within the project budget
  • Attitude towards the project or other team members

The decision needs to be based on more than one of those criteria, so a scoring system could be used where each candidate is scored on each of the factors and a decision is made based on the highest score. Weighting can be applied to emphasise the importance of any of those factors if required.

When managing risks, the criteria used to form a risk response strategy might include:

  • Ranking risks on the basis severity and likelihood of occurring
  • Cost of the mitigation or avoidance of the risk
  • Effectiveness of the risk mitigation
  • The effect of the mitigation on other areas of the project

Some of the Decision-Making Techniques that can be used are:

  • A scoring matrix based on predefined criteria with weighting for more important factors
  • Voting on the decision and deciding based on a majority
  • Autocratic decisions – a senior member of the project team makes the decision

Related Articles:

 
  • Group Decision Making Techniques  Group decision making is a participatory process wherein members of the team collectivity analyze problems and look for solutions together....
  •  
  • Group Creativity Techniques  Project managers have to deal with different types of people in any activities and it is the role of the...
  •  
  • Majority  Every day, project managers make decisions. In most cases, project leaders have to lead the team to create important decisions...
  •  
  • Making the Most of Your Project Team Meetings  Anyone who has sat through a long and boring project management team meeting has probably thought, at least once, “Why...
  •  
  • Decision Tree Analysis  A decision tree analysis is a specific technique in which a diagram (in this case referred to as a decision...
  • Primary Sidebar

    Dear Visitor, I am a PMP (Project Management Professional), certified by the Project Management Institute since 2004. I have been managing dozens of projects, small and huge, successful and unsuccessful. This site is supposed to help you learn the required vocabulary of the project management world. Please feel free to check my certification status or to learn more about me.

    Copyright © 2021

    • Privacy Policy