Using simulation to study decision-making in project portfolio management

This project reports how an emerging awareness of the complexity of project portfolio management (PPM) led t development of a role-play simulation for assessing different means of identifying and reflecting on factors influencing the quality of decision making in stressful PPm situations. Recognition of the inability to access reliable data from within organisations resulted in the development of an open and chaordic (Waldrop, 1996) simulation that replicates aspects of the decision-making processes commonly encountered in such complicated and complex conditions. The paper describes the Action LEarning process used to develop this simulation. The contribution of this project to the field of project portfolio management therefore spans both the development of a specific simulation strategy as a research methodology and analysis of issues relating to factors adversely affecting decision-making capacity in times of stress