As the project grows large enough, we should expect to be perpetually choking on one bottleneck or other.
I did understand that but was suggesting that the criteria as a mega project was really not about the costs—though fully expect a high costs to be associated with such effort. As you say, they cannot be easily be separated into more manageable sub-projects. Perhaps I can rephrase my though. Is the position that any and every project that costs $X or more necessarily has the type of complexity and non-separability?
If not then the ability to classify high cost projects should be useful—and point to alternative management requirements if all projects greater than $x still suffer from many of the same inefficiencies.
Each new stakeholder is a stupendous increase in the political complexity of the project, so much so that even at the smaller level of projects where we know the right answers about how to do them applying the right answers is often impossible because of the different interests at play.
Sure, and you run into whole problem of what exactly is the right answer as the different stakeholder are maximizing slightly different (and likely equally legitimate) criteria. That alone is not a bad or wrong thing. But the approach of limiting participation, in a way, seems exactly the same thing as chunking the project into manageable bites. But it’s not clear that can be done much better than disassembling the project into smaller, simpler and more manageable sub projects.
If so, limiting the stakeholders then the assessment of the project will always be one of partial failure. That would also drive various type of cost over run and time delays when such excluded stakeholders seek to influence the project from outside the management process.
It’s not clear to me that would be the optimal solution to all mega projects.
Is the position that any and every project that costs $X or more necessarily has the type of complexity and non-separability?
is a reasonable approximation of Flyvbjerg’s position. As you say, it is not really about costs per se; the cost is a heuristic for things that drive complexity and non-separability, while also being the primary metric for success.
I did understand that but was suggesting that the criteria as a mega project was really not about the costs—though fully expect a high costs to be associated with such effort. As you say, they cannot be easily be separated into more manageable sub-projects. Perhaps I can rephrase my though. Is the position that any and every project that costs $X or more necessarily has the type of complexity and non-separability?
If not then the ability to classify high cost projects should be useful—and point to alternative management requirements if all projects greater than $x still suffer from many of the same inefficiencies.
Sure, and you run into whole problem of what exactly is the right answer as the different stakeholder are maximizing slightly different (and likely equally legitimate) criteria. That alone is not a bad or wrong thing. But the approach of limiting participation, in a way, seems exactly the same thing as chunking the project into manageable bites. But it’s not clear that can be done much better than disassembling the project into smaller, simpler and more manageable sub projects.
If so, limiting the stakeholders then the assessment of the project will always be one of partial failure. That would also drive various type of cost over run and time delays when such excluded stakeholders seek to influence the project from outside the management process.
It’s not clear to me that would be the optimal solution to all mega projects.
I think this:
is a reasonable approximation of Flyvbjerg’s position. As you say, it is not really about costs per se; the cost is a heuristic for things that drive complexity and non-separability, while also being the primary metric for success.