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

by Bent Flyvbjerg

I started with an obscure phrase found within a paper that Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky published in 1979—not the famous 1979 paper on “prospect theory” that won Kahneman the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2002 but another paper the prolific duo published the same year. The phrase is “reference class.”[8] To understand what a reference class is, bear in mind that there are two fundamentally different ways to look at a project. The first is to see it as its own special undertaking. All projects are special to some degree. Even if the project isn’t something as wildly creative as making a Pixar film, going to Mars, or fighting a pandemic, even if it’s as mundane as remodeling a suburban house or as common as building a small bridge, developing a software program, or hosting a conference, at least some aspects of the project will be unique. Maybe it’s the people who will do the work or how they will do it. Or the location. Or current economic circumstances. Or a unique combination of these factors. There will always be something that makes this project different from all others.