This captivating book by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner explains how the majority of huge projects (buildings, road infrastructure, nuclear plants…) statistically run overtime and over budget. So what are the tools to avoid that? My two favroite takeaways:

  • Think Slowly, Act Fast. (Think Slow during the Design/Planning phase, Act Fast during the Production phase)
  • Think and build in “legos”.

The authors provide fun anecdotes about projects like the Empire State Building and the Guggenheim in Bilbao (and less successful like the California High Speed Rail and the Big Dig in Boston…).

Many of the ideas are consistent with Design Thinking principles: make sure you really understand the context/purpose of the project before moving forward.

And though Flyvbjerg’s process seems contradictory to Agile methods, they actually do resonate on the idea of “build and test and iterate” - but Flyvbjerg emphasizes to do this with prototypes during the planning phase, and not during production phase!

A fun read, and useful even for personal projects like home renovations. :) Thanks Sue for the suggestion.