Project Trade-Off Decisions The Gap between Reality and the Academic World

This paper draws attention to project trade-offs significance in project management and critically reviews the current state of the knowledge on the elements to be considered and the methods to resolve trade-off decisions. Traditionally the elements to be considered in trade-offs are mainly limited to time and cost and to some extent quality or risk or the well-known Project Triangle. The trade-off methods are also dominantly developed based on mathematical models familiar in Operations Research. The limitations of traditional approaches in identifying trade-off elements; the constraints of the common methods of trade-off resolution; and the necessity of compatibility between resolution methods and features of trade-off decisions are highlighted. The researchers‟ approach and methodology to fill the gap between the realities of project trade-off decisions mainly based on the compatibility of the decision problem characteristics and capabilities of the decision making method are described.