International Development Programmes (IDPs) are United Nations‘ (UN) and developedcountries‘ initiatives to develop world‘s least developed countries. IDPs significantly vary fromother mainstream project management topics, as most often they do not have eye for commercialsuccess or are not of simple charity nature of humanitarian perspective aid. Projects under IDPstry to deliver United Nations‘ and rich countries commitment to provide sustainable developmentto developing world in terms of reducing poverty and hunger, improving health and educationsystem, building capacity to face disasters, eliminating gender discrimination, among others.This significant difference and lack of research in this field has left a gap in established projectmanagement methodologies that could be generalised as specifically suitable for IDPs.The knowledge of project selection methodologies has reached to its extreme variety, as itspreads from the simplest model of a checklist to the highest degree mathematical model.Leading researchers in the field have come to conclusion that project selection methods have tomatch the needs of a specific programme or portfolio to serve its purpose. The uniqueness ofIDPs intensified the necessity of choosing projects by understanding the financial and strategicbenefit they can deliver matching their resource requirement. In absence of straight direction inthe research and real life case observations, the practice in project selection in IDPs has not stillbeen an established procedure.To explore this need the authors of this report examined the theoretical framework of projectselection and their compliance with IDPs unique characteristics. Project selection methodsshowed that due to organisations‘ varied need of delivering financial or strategic objectives, theselection models significantly vary. The use of different financial or strategic criteria withdifferent emphasis on them is highlighted in project selection articles. Further analysis wasfocused on project selection stages and possible challenges evolving in the selection process.The researchers tried to explore project selection methods used in IDPs in Bangladesh byanalyzing four different cases. The examination of the project selection process showed that itmainly follows the multi-stage assessment procedure, with project evaluation conducted by theassessment panel, comprised from the functional experts and in some cases stakeholders‘representatives. Further, from the findings it was evident that the primary theoretical suggestionsfor IDPs project selection methods being strategy driven rather than being commercial in natureis true. In all four cases, the researchers have seen the selectors using scoring and ranking modelthat are specifically designed with higher emphasis on the strategic factors, and that try to deliverdevelopment objective rather than contributing to commercial success. In addition, thechallenges in IDP project selection practice are also discussed. Challenges like deliveringdevelopment needs while trying to make the project sustainable in the long run, managing thepowerful influence of different stakeholders in selecting projects, avoiding country politics,among others are making the project selection more difficult. The main contribution of thisresearch has been establishing a primary selection framework from case evidence withsuggestions on appropriate model, set of criteria which can be used and a set of challenges to beaware of. The study is presented as a basis for further research in this field.

Esta dissertação relata o estudo sobre os fatores críticos de sucesso do gerenciamento de portfolio de projetos em empresas que atuam no Brasil e também verifica os impactos sobre os resultados organizacionais. A pesquisa foi realizada através de um levantamento junto a profissionais engajados no gerenciamento de projetos que responderam a questionário elaborado a partir de revisão da literatura pertinente ao tema. Os fatores críticos de sucesso validados são: o alinhamento com a estratégia e o processo de gerenciamento de portfolio. Quanto aos impactos sobre os resultados, foi confirmado que o gerenciamento de portfolio impacta positivamente o gerenciamento dos projetos, a satisfação das partes interessadas e a maturidade em projetos. Embora a literatura tenha sido pesquisada, a linha mestra para a pesquisa, principalmente quanto ao processo de gerenciamento de portfolio, ficou centrada nas publicações do Instituto de Gerenciamento de Projetos, mais conhecido por PMI - Project Management Institute. / This dissertation reports the study about success key factors of project portfolio management in companies which act in Brazil and it also analyses the impacts on organizational results. The research was made through a survey applied to people engaged in project management activities whose answered to questionnaire that was elaborated since a review of the literature related to this subject. The validated success key factors are the following: alignment with strategy and the portfolio management process. About the impacts on the results, it was confirmed that portfolio management impacts positively in project management, in project stakeholder satisfaction and in project management maturity. Although an extensive part of literature was consulted, the main approach mainly to the portfolio management process was focused in PMI issues.

Systems for implementing the Structural Funds have always been crucial to the impact of the Cohesion policy. At the heart of all programs of the Structural Funds are the systems for apprising and selecting projects, determining the efficiency and effectiveness of the program implementation. The aim of this paper is to examine the implementation of the Structural Funds in the 2007-2013 period in the Czech Republic in terms of effective resource allocation through grant projects. The examination focuses on the responsibilities and methods in the project appraisal and selection used under the Operational Program Education for Competitiveness and compares them to similar procedures applied by the European Commission in management of the community Life Long Learning Program in the current financial period. Based on discussion of the respective systems, the paper highlights the main differences between the systems and proposes for consideration several changes to the project selection under the Operational Program Education for Competitiveness to increase its effectiveness and transparency of the system.

Corporate strategies have a low success rate and strategic objectives are frequently not met. To gain insight into this phenomenon, this research explores the process of generating and implementing strategy through CAPEX projects within the mature Swedish process industry. By the use of the grounded theory methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven professionals from five different industries matching the description of a process industry. The results suggest that the concentration and capital intensiveness of the process industry in Sweden calls for an emphasis on asset management, production, and product portfolios with objectives primarily being sustainability or growth related. Examples of sustainability objectives are emissions, carbon footprint, raw materials and safety, whereas growth related objectives often refer to finding the firms position in the market, reaching economies of scope and scale, and optimizing the product portfolio regionally. A crucial tool for implementing strategy is project selection, the results suggest that a mix of two approaches (bottom-up and the bucket model) is often used. This combined approach is just briefly mentioned in literature, however, in this research it has been referred to as “empty bucket model” in this research due to similarities with the bucket model. Further research recommendations include conducting surveys based on identified themes or diving deeper into particular areas such as recent agility improvements.

To provide a more in-depth analysis of potential roadway projects, the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) desired a method of evaluating projects according to their economic potential without using potentially costly computer models or excessive data collection. Brigham Young University (BYU) was retained to research and recommend criteria for the economic development criteria in the project-prioritization process. A literature review was first undertaken to better understand the transportation-economic development relationship. Using the literature review, combined with the information from the Economic Development Corporation of Utah, the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget, the Governor's Office of Economic Development, and a Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), criteria were established to evaluate the economic potential of a roadway project. The criteria were finalized using a Policy Delphi method that included the Research Team and TAC. The four aggregate criteria and one bonus criterion recommended are: 1) population and education; 2) existing infrastructure; 3) economic attractiveness; 4) tourism; and 5) the bonus: economic choke-points, which allows UDOT regions to specify a prioritized list of projects that could help increase the economic development potential of an area if those projects are built. An evaluation framework was also developed for the economic development criteria. Any project that passes the Tier I analysis is recommended to be subjected to the economic analysis of the Tier II process. The researchers recommend that once a list of passing Tier I projects is received, the list should be sent out to any participating in the expert feedback portion of the economic attractiveness scoring as well as to the UDOT regions and districts for choke-point prioritization analysis. All of the databases will be updated to provide the most up-to-date scoring possible. When all of the scores have been assigned, the projects will then be listed by highest to lowest scores. The list will then be compiled by UDOT who will present the information to the Transportation Commission in a manner that will best assist in the decision-making process. The research created a scoring evaluation for each recommended criterion. Each criterion also received a weighting. The scoring and the framework are recommended to UDOT as the economic analysis of the Tier II evaluation. The criteria are recommended to be automated in a geographic information systems (GIS) database to aid in the scoring process.

This thesis has its origin in empirical evidence. Some Swedish companies claimed that despite having plenty of proposals for developing new products, they experienced problems when choosing from all those alternatives. Their problem was how to select among new ideas the ones for being developed and the ones to be rejected, how many projects to run according to their capacity, when to start a development project and when to stop one, and how to decide among ongoing projects which the most important ones were. The companies’ problem was decision making in the context of innovation.  According to literature, a deeper understanding is needed of the decision making process in innovation, taking into account its organizational and procedural complexities. The purpose of this thesis is to achieve an understanding of the decision making process in innovation.  The thesis is based on an explorative study, with interviews carried out in three companies that have new product development as a core competitive factor. The empirical study focuses on the decisions made for selection and prioritization of different innovative alternatives.  As a result of the analysis of the empirical data a conceptualization of the decision making process was developed. Furthermore, it was described the relevant problems that decision makers experience, the main characteristics of the decision making process and the role that decision making plays in innovation. The implications of these findings for designing work procedures to support decision making in innovation were discussed; and general descriptions of two practical methods suggested.  The main findings indicate that for making decisions in the context of innovation, organizations must be able to face uncertain and ambiguous situations, and achieve a collective understanding about what is to be done. To do this, different approaches for making decisions and understanding innovation are needed. However, regardless of the appropriateness of these approaches, they receive different levels of acceptance within organizations; and decision makers must deal with the different grades of organizational acceptance of the different approaches. As a consequence, an organization displays certain dynamic using different approaches for making decisions and for understanding innovation. Such dynamic influences the companies’ innovative potential and the output of the innovation process. / QC 20101111

Increasing demands, shrinking financial and human resources, and increased infrastructure deterioration have made the task of maintaining the infrastructure systems more challenging than ever before. Life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) is an important tool for transportation infrastructure management, which is used extensively to support project level decisions, and is increasingly being applied to enhance network level analysis. However, traditional LCCA tools cannot practically and effectively utilize expert knowledge and handle ambiguous uncertainties. The main objective of this dissertation was to develop enhanced LCCA models using soft computing (mainly fuzzy logic) techniques. The proposed models use available "real-world" information to forecast life-cycle costs of competing maintenance and rehabilitation strategies and support infrastructure management decisions. A critical review of available soft computing techniques and their applications in infrastructure management suggested that these techniques provide appealing alternatives for supporting many of the infrastructure management functions. In particular, LCCA often utilizes information that is uncertain, ambiguous and incomplete, which is obtained from both existing databases and expert opinion. Consequently, fuzzy logic techniques were selected to enhance life-cycle cost analysis of transportation infrastructure investments because they provide a formal approach for the effective treatment of these types of information. The dissertation first proposes a fuzzy-logic-based decision-support model, whose inference rules can be customized according to agency's management policies and expert opinion. The feasibility and practicality of the proposed model is illustrated by its implementation in a life-cycle cost analysis algorithm for comparing and selecting pavement maintenance, rehabilitation and reconstruction (MR&R) policies. To enhance the traditional probabilistic LCCA model, the fuzzy-logic-based model is then incorporated into the risk analysis process. A fuzzy logic approach for determining the timing of pavement MR&R treatments in a probabilistic LCCA model for selecting pavement MR&R strategies is proposed. The proposed approach uses performance curves and fuzzy-logic triggering models to determine the most effective timing of pavement MR&R activities. The application of the approach in a case study demonstrates that the fuzzy-logic-based risk analysis model for LCCA can effectively produce results that are at least comparable to those of the benchmark methods while effectively considering some of the ambiguous uncertainty inherent to the process. Finally, the research establishes a systematic method to calibrate the fuzzy-logic based rehabilitation decision model using real cases extracted from the Long Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) database. By reinterpreting the model in the form of a neuro-fuzzy system, the calibration algorithm takes advantage of the learning capabilities of artificial neural networks for tuning the fuzzy membership functions and rules. The practicality of the method is demonstrated by successfully tuning the treatment selection model to distinguish between rehabilitation (light overlay) and do-nothing cases. / Ph. D.

Transportation agencies engage in extensive data collection activities in order to support their decision processes at various levels. However, not all the data collected supply transportation officials with useful information for efficient and effective decision-making. This thesis presents research aimed at formally identifying links between data collection and the supported decision processes. The research objective identifies existing relationships between Asset Management data collection and the decision processes to be supported by them, particularly in the project selection level. It also proposes a framework for effective and efficient data collection. The motivation of the project was to help transportation agencies optimize their data collection processes and cut down data collection and management costs. The methodology used entailed two parts: a comprehensive literature review that collected information from various academic and industrial sources around the world (mostly from Europe, Australia and Canada) and the development of a web survey that was e-mailed to specific expert individuals within the 50 U.S. Departments of Transportation (DOTs) and Puerto Rico. The electronic questionnaire was designed to capture state officials' experience and practice on: asset management endorsement and implementation; data collection, management and integration; decision-making levels and decision processes; and identified relations between decision processes and data collection. The responses obtained from the web survey were analyzed statistically and combined with the additional resources in order to develop the proposed framework and recommendations. The results of this research are expected to help transportation agencies and organizations not only reduce costs in their data collection but also make more effective project selection decisions. / Master of Science

Volvo’s plant in Umeå has a constant need for development, where to start new activities like projects and investments are important tools, where the competition on the market is increasing. The need for investments are major compared to the resources available, both in terms of human resources and economic resources. The plant needs to prioritize trying to choose what kind of investments are the best for the plant’s future. The problem is that there is a lack of reliable priority model for investments that consider several different parameters. To solve this issue the goal is to create a useful model that can work as a tool to prioritize projects and investments in an appropriate and reliable way. The study began with a literature review to make the researcher approach the subject and gather the knowledge needed for this study. After this, qualitative semi-structured interviews were made with different managers at the plant, to acquire their expertise and knowledge regarding the selection of criteria and their preferences of how the model should work. The next step was to analyze the old model used at the plant, its strengths, and weaknesses. At the same time, constant discussions were held with the supervisor and his manager but as well with the university, mainly through seminars. When the researcher felt he was ready he started to create the new model. There were 30 criteria included in the model, mainly collected through interviews. The large number of criteria collected were sorted into Volvo’s catchwords SQDCEP (Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost, Environmental, People). These were decided to function as the main criteria in the model, and all the 30 criteria were called sub-criteria. The model itself originates from a process called the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). It is an established and wellknown methodology to make prioritizations. Its main idea is to compare every single project against each other which makes the method very thoughtful, solid and probably better than other ones. The conclusion is that the model is complete and should work perfectly to be used for Volvo and other companies in the complex manufacturing industry. Furthermore, the criteria chosen for the model should also be applicable for other similar companies to Volvo, as the criteria are not unique.

Métodos tradicionais de seleção de portfólio de projetos tendem a privilegiar dimensões e aspectos mais relacionados ao lucro e/ou crescimento. Além dessas dimensões e aspectos, Institutos Públicos podem se orientar por aspectos de dimensões que, a exemplo da social, são menos passíveis de avaliação objetiva. Isso justifica a conveniência de instrumentos auxiliares aos processos de seleção de projetos organizados a partir de prioridades não coincidentes com aquelas que comumente orientam empresas privadas. A proposição desta tese foi sistematizar um instrumento auxiliar aos métodos de seleção de projetos de P&D em Institutos Públicos. Trata-se da sistematização de relações em algoritmo que possibilita e valoriza as manifestações de entendimentos orientados primordialmente por diferentes dimensões que fundamentam a missão institucional. O instrumento auxiliar proposto se revelou efetivo em atender as diversas dimensões que orientam um Instituto Público, e compatível com a dinâmica operacional de modelos tradicionais de seleção de projetos e de gestão de portfólio de projetos. Essa efetividade e a compatibilidade operacional foram verificadas com base em uma simulação de seleção realizada a partir de projetos já componentes do portfólio de um Instituto Público. O ranqueamento dos projetos resultou diferente daquele produzido em procedimento comumente utilizado pelo instituto. Conclui-se que, ainda que somente auxiliar aos modelos tradicionais de seleção de projetos, o instrumento proposto pode concorrer para processos de seleção que melhor considerem as múltiplas dimensões e diferentes perspectivas presentes na gestão de Institutos Públicos. / Traditional project portfolio selection methods tend to confer greater privilege to profit and/or outgrowth than to other dimensions and aspects; however, public institutes have some different dimensions, such as social development, that go beyond the economic and financial aspects to ground the institutional mission. This context is appropriate for complementary selection methods or based on different priorities from private companies methods. This thesis proposes to systematize an auxiliary instrument for R&D projects selection processes, aiming to better meet Public Institutes needs. The systematization of relations, calculated by an algorithm, enables and valorizes the manifested understanding driven by different dimensions that underlie the institutional mission. The proposed auxiliary instrument proved to be effective to better meet the diverse dimensions that drive a Public Institute, and to be fully compatible with the operational dynamics of traditional models for project selection and project portfolio management. Such effectiveness and operational compatibility were checked using a project selection simulation of projects from a Public Institute portfolio. The ranking of the portfolio resulted differently from the procedure commonly used by the Institute. In summary, although the instrument proposed is only complementary to traditional methods of project selection, it can contribute to project selection processes that better consider different perspectives and multiple dimensions that characterize Public Institutes management.