Decision-making and management of pre-investment in a programme of projects

Abstract

Owing to ever-increasing business pressures and the resulting requirements of organisations, individual projects rarely fulfil all expectations; so it is quite often necessary to implement a programme of interdependent projects. In such programmes the matter of pre-investment (investing effort or money before the project results are required) is a recurring theme amongst programme managers. However, very few decision-making techniques or management guidelines on the topic of pre-investment are available. In this paper a framework is proposed to assist a programme or project manager in the decision-making and management of pre-investment in a programme. The framework is based on pre-investment propositions with high levels of support from a Delphi panel, in the context of a multi-billion Rand petrochemical programme. The results of the research are three matrices that provide guidance on the timing of pre-investment, tools and information required, and benefits of pre-investment. These guidelines all relate to four aspects of pre-investment: context, systems and procedures, timing, and scope. Even though the work was done in the context of a specific case, the preinvestment guidelines should be applicable in various industries.