Tools · Project Blind Spots Check
Major projects frequently exceed their budgets, miss deadlines or fail to deliver their intended benefits. This happens despite intelligent, experienced executives and project leaders who know the principles of successful delivery. Explore which of the eight traps may be present in your initiative and discuss how to avoid them.
01 / Why
Decades of research by Oxford professor Bent Flyvbjerg, brought together with Dan Gardner in How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration, explain how cognitive and political biases undermine major initiatives. We become overly optimistic, disregard comparable experience and grow attached to decisions already made.
Our work with large organisations points to the organisational conditions behind these decisions. What appears irrational from the organisation's perspective can be entirely rational for the individuals involved, given the incentives, hierarchies and unwritten rules that shape their decisions. A manager may know that a realistic timetable will never win approval. An executive may hesitate to stop a failing initiative because of the personal consequences.
Leadership adds another difficulty: reconciling competing demands. Ambition needs realism, commitment needs flexibility and alignment needs constructive disagreement. Any value disconnected from its opposite leads to a pathology.
The Project Blind Spots Check brings these insights into 24 evidence-based questions for executive sponsors and project leaders in business and government. Each question probes an assumption that even an experienced leader may be making without noticing. It helps identify the eight traps, why they arise and what to do about them, before approval, during delivery or during evaluation.
Read the thinking behind the eight trapsThe assessment
Four decisions, from defining the case to reconsidering it. Each trap describes a familiar way in which good intentions can lead to poor outcomes. The assessment tests whether your safeguards are visible in practice.
We become invested in a preferred answer before testing whether it is the best route to the outcome we need.
We treat our initiative as exceptional and discount what actually happened in comparable projects.
Precise budgets and dates hide weak assumptions, dependencies and exposure to severe downside risks.
Public promises and major investments close options before the most consequential unknowns have been tested.
We mistake seniority or technical credentials for proven delivery experience and overlook gaps in the wider team.
Formal agreement can conceal unresolved objections and conflicting incentives. When pressure rises, colleagues discover they cannot rely on one another to deliver.
We bundle too much into one launch, delaying feedback and allowing complexity and interdependence to grow.
Past spending, public commitments and personal credibility make it harder to change course when the evidence turns.
Think of a major project you know that went wrong. Which of these traps played a part? Now consider an initiative you are involved in. Use the assessment below to test what could go wrong and how to prevent it.
02 / Assessment
Choose the answer that best matches observable evidence, rather than what is intended or generally considered good practice. The explanation after each response reveals why the question matters and what helps.
Select the stage of your initiative, or review one that has finished or stopped. You can complete this check as an executive sponsor, programme leader or independent reviewer. It does not require project-identifying information.
The answers stay in this browser tab. They are not submitted to IntotheNXT. You may download a report using your browser's Save as PDF option.
03 / Discussion
Your results identify possible exposure to eight traps and suggest a focused discussion. They do not predict project success, diagnose people's motives or replace professional judgment.
Complete the 24 questions to see your profile, critical review points and suggested actions.
Higher bars indicate more reported evidence of safeguards. Questions answered "cannot verify" are flagged separately. A low bar is a prompt to investigate, not a prediction of failure.
After reflecting on the evidence, how confident are you now that the initiative will deliver its intended benefits within acceptable cost and time?
Invite colleagues to complete the check independently and compare the evidence behind your answers.