Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant, new reality. Think of how the Empire State Building went from a sketch to the jewel of New York's skyline in twenty-one months, or how Apple’s iPod went from a project with a single employee to a product launch in eleven months.

Flyvbjerg’s study of big construction projects worldwide has led him to formulate the iron law of megaprojects: over budget, over time, under benefits, over and over again. His deep understanding of why big projects fail—and occasionally succeed—makes this book a truly fascinating read. There’s a practical payoff, too: a toolbox with eleven smart heuristics for better project leadership that every planner who wants to succeed should know." — Gerd Gigerenzer, psychologist, author of Gut Feelings it is full of delicious anecdotes about project management disasters. Movie flop Heaven’s Gate was already five days behind schedule after just six days of shooting, which had yielded just a minute and a half of usable material. The Sydney Opera House turned out to be unbuildable to its original design (“a magnificent doodle” in critic Robert Hughes’ memorable description) and, once finished, was acoustically unsuitable for opera. [The authors] succeed in extracting valuable lessons from these failures — and some occasional successes." — Financial Times I had some quibbles here and there on details. Eg, in discussing risk management the analysis suggests that the probability of any one of a set of independent events occurring is the sum of probabilities for each event, but this is of course incorrect. Over-budget and over-schedule is an inevitability. Incompetence and grift is outrageous. Bent Flyvbjerg, with this terrific data-driven book, has shown that there is another way." — Frank Gehry, architectThe secrets to successfully planning and delivering projects on any scale—from home renovation to space exploration—by the world’s leading expert on megaprojects Understanding what distinguishes the triumphs from the failures has been the life’s work of Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg, dubbed “the world’s leading megaproject expert.” In How Big Things Get Done, he and Dan Gardner identify the errors in judgment and decision-making that lead projects, both big and small, to fail, and the research-based principles that will make you succeed with yours.

Flyvbjerg’s study of big construction projects worldwide has led him to formulate the iron law of megaprojects: over budget, over time, under benefits, over and over again. His deep understanding of why big projects fail—and occasionally succeed—makes this book a truly fascinating read.” —Gerd Gigerenzer, author of Gut Feelings Flyvbjerg’s study of big projects worldwide has led him to formulate the iron law of megaprojects: over budget, over time, under benefits, over and over again. His deep understanding of why big projects fail—and occasionally succeed—makes this book a truly fascinating read. There’s a practical payoff, too: a toolbox with eleven smart heuristics for better project leadership that every planner who wants to succeed should know.” Thinking ‘right to left’ refers to the process chart – classically the Gantt chart – that is used in most project planning and management, where you have the end result or the outcome on the right, and then everything that needs to happen left of that,” he says. Nothing is more inspiring than a big vision that becomes a triumphant, new reality. Think of how the Empire State Building went from a sketch to the jewel of New York’s skyline in twenty-one months, or how Apple’s iPod went from a project with a single employee to a product launch in eleven months. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, distinguished professor of risk engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and author of the Incerto seriesHow Big Things Get Done is] a book that every legislator, city council member and corporate executive ought to read.” — The Wall Street Journal Understanding what distinguishes the triumphs from the failures has been the life’s work of Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg, dubbed “the world’s leading megaproject expert.” In How Big Things Get Done, he identifies the errors in judgment and decision-making that lead projects, both big and small, to fail, and the research-based principles that will make you succeed with yours. For example: You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. In total, only 8.5 percent of projects hit the mark on both cost and time. And a minuscule 0.5 percent nail cost, time, and benefits.” Reference class forecasting refers to doing costing based on ex post data rather than only ex ante assumptions. The call for actual data collection is certainly laudable.

Having researched the properties of planning errors, I am confident that nobody has studied the topic more broadly and deeply than Bent Flyvbjerg. His focus ranges from the Olympic Games to the renovation of your doghouse.” Then the value of building large projects from modular components is highlighted by looking at modular construction and how solar panel projects are accurately costed. Finally the book sums up the lessons from the book and the value that would be obtained if big projects were run better. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. Having researched the properties of planning errors, I am confident that nobody has studied the topic more broadly and deeply than Bent Flyvbjerg. His focus ranges from the Olympic Games to the renovation of your doghouse." — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, distinguished professor of risk engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and author of the Incerto series

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HIGHLY recommend for anyone in construction aindustry, or even anyone considering that "light" home remodelling project: One of the critical factors to a project’s success, argues Flyvbjerg, the first BT Professor and inaugural Chair of Major Programme Management at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, is whether enough thinking time has been put into the planning of the project. By countering our natural human urge to think swiftly, we must slow ourselves down to carefully consider what needs to be done. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Author's insights are very helpful whether you're building the next big project, thinking about that "small” home remodelling job, developing a Hollywood movie, or simply undertaking anything that you think will cost X dollars and take Y time but has potential for spiralling out of control on both fronts.

Full Book Name: How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything in Between Pixar planning”: use low stakes pilot tests and high resolution models to get all the details right. It’s crazy, but the average practice in project management is a disaster, and good practice is an outlier,” says Flyvbjerg. But in new research included in his book, he documents which type of projects perform well and which don’t. He found that the best-performing projects are renewable energy projects, like wind and solar – and the reason for this is their modularity, he explains. But it's much more than that. There are a good number of entertaining best and worse case examples to draw from, illustrating the cognitive biases, nasty surprises and misplaced hubris that high-flying project directors have faced, with everything from the Sydney Opera house to Terminal 5 of Heathrow making a guest appearance.There is an excellent section on using the cost of similar projects to get a base rate cost and also to see what proportion of similar projects go over budget by and how much they go over budget by.