Because “I’m behind schedule” is Not an Option
Behavioral Science Gets Results with NEURALPLAN
Some projects have seen an 80% increase in probability of meeting milestones
The NeuralPlan Project Planning Qualification (NPPQ) seeks to reduce the physical errors in execution by reducing the cognitive errors in project decision-making
Design Your Projects Around the Brain
Included in the NPPQ certification course:
Introduction to behavioral and neuroscience
Explanation of applicable cognitive biases
The role of various cognitive functions that decrease rational and logical thinking in prediction
Mitigation techniques in individual decisions in planning, forecasting, and risk analysis
Cognitive functions that increase risky decision-making
Using earned value and other metrics to measure optimistic predictions in the organization
Designing planning processes and procedures around the brain to increase prediction accuracy (some projects have seen up to 80% increase in plan accuracy, which means less missed milestones)
Organizational, leadership, and social considerations that impact planning and forecasting accuracy
Project diagnostics to identify sources of low prediction accuracy
Read what the University of Maryland is saying about this important project management approach, here: University of Maryland article on Behavioral Project Management
NeuralPlan
Our Latest Group of NPPQ Graduates
The course is self-paced and takes approximately 60 hours to complete, with many completing the NeuralPlan course within a matter of weeks
Hear more about the science from the PM Point of View, PMO Joe, and PM Happy Hour podcasts, below:
NeuralPlan
For Project Professionals
Project Executives
Project Managers
Project Controls
Estimators
Risk Analysts
Program Managers
Contracts Managers
People interested in behavioral and cognitive science in project management
Any project professionals in project planning, project forecasting, and project risk analysis
Become a NeuralPlanner
U.S. residents may sign up for the NPPQ credential course with payments of less than $45 a month
Subject to eligibility. Payment options through Affirm are provided by these lending partners: affirm.com/lenders.
NeuralPlan
Your Brain holds the key to project acceleration
9 Cognitive Factors that Drive Project Management Errors
NeuralPlan goes into depth on different cognitive factors that drive decision-making errors.
In a project, the brain:
Misses information (time pressure)
Avoids information (cognitive dissonance)
Bypasses information (inertia)
Defaults to wrong information (heuristics)
Fears certain information (psychological safety)
Under-processes information (cognitive load)
Changes information (social pressure)
Sees the wrong information (framing)
Loses energy to find information (decision fatigue)
Did you know?
Most planning errors aren’t due to technical errors…
Rather, they are due to errors in thinking, or cognition; thinking errors such as deliberate ignorance, strategic misrepresentation, and others. The error starts in the brain, before it ever reaches the plan.
Identifying obstacles improves duration accuracy…
Behavioral studies show if you identify obstacles prior to estimating activity duration, optimism bias goes down, plan reliability goes up, and you can accelerate delivery. Interesting how the brain works, isn’t it?
Optimistic plans may not always be due to optimism bias…
This was an interesting find! Human cognition changes data finding, data seeking, and intentionality around project predictions. Optimistic plans aren’t always optimism bias.
Pay Over Time
Subject to eligibility. Payment options through Affirm are provided by these lending partners: affirm.com/lenders.
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NPPQ Credential - NeuralPlan Master Planner Course
On-demand, full NPPQ Master Planner course on the redesign of planning, forecasting, and risk analysis around human cognition. This is the full course, with the NPPQ credential.
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1-on-1 Coaching + NPPQ Credential Course
6 hours of coaching with one of the researchers, Dr. Josh Ramirez, PLUS on-demand, full Master Planner course on the redesign of planning, forecasting, and risk analysis around human cognition.
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NeuralPlan Condensed Course - Non Credential
On-demand condensed course, for the planning professional who wants to learn some of the basics of NeuralPlan. This course introduces some of the core concepts.
Project Intelligence - at a Whole New Level
Video: Behavioral Project Management - the Next Step in PM
The NPPQ credential
Designed from over 250 evidence-based studies
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Dr. Mark Reeson, NPPQ
"The Neural Plan Certification course grabbed my interest immediately, simply because as a Project Professional, I understand the key aspect to project delivery is people.
Through taking the course, it has allowed me not only to increase my own self-awareness through a reflective process of learning but to also understand why others behaviour differ in certain changing circumstances.”
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Ruth Pearce, NPPQ
“I highly recommend this program for those who want to understand how the human brain supports. - and sometimes thwarts - the best laid plans!
Discover how to adjust our methods of planning to take account of the way brains work. Leverage our natural tendencies instead of tripping over them. Project management processes are essential and have been well-established over the past 50+ years. Now it is time to adapt those techniques for who we as humans really are!”
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Hector Mendez, NPPQ
“Often times people rely on outside things to help them solve things. But sometimes, if you look inside the mind, you might see that sometimes outside things aren't needed. The art of self-mastery starts with the mastery of your mind.
NeuralPlan uses science to help you see how the mind behaves so you can start to master it, so your predictions are the best they can be in Project Management, and this is why I have so much interest in it.”
50% of projects fail their cost and schedule objectives
70% of those errors originate from how humans think
That’s $5 trillion in a year in global project impacts
Don’t Be Fooled by the Planning Fallacy
The planning fallacy video from the NeuralPlan course that explains the planning fallacy bias and the difference between this bias and optimism bias
Be valued as the Thinking and Planning Expert on how the human component impacts projects and planning.
Many answers are in the growing discipline of Behavioral Project Management.
You’ll Learn the Hidden Side of Risk
A video from the NeuralPlan course that explains the tendency of humans to sometimes experience mental discomfort with new information, resulting in the avoidance of risk mitigation.
Subject to eligibility. Payment options through Affirm are provided by these lending partners: affirm.com/lenders.
Be the Diagnostician
The full Master Planner course includes a new look at diagnostics of planning errors from an organizational perspective.
This helps the practitioner diagnose what drivers in the project are causing optimistic plans, and determine the cognitive obstacles to projects being delivered on time and on budget.
Be a Part of the Community
Visit the Institute website and become a member
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E69 - Neuroscience in Project Management
Drs. Josh Ramirez and Jodi Wilson explain behavioral and neuroscience in project management
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E50 - The Science of Project Management
Dr. Josh Ramirez explains the emerging fields of Behavioral Project Management and Project Science
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E83 - Tips from Behavioral Science
Dr. Shari De Baets discusses behavioral science including cognitive biases and heuristics in forecasting and planning
An article on the importance of this new science,
by the Director of the Project Management Center of Excellence at the University of Maryland
“…we have all learned about the brain’s fight-or-flight response to physical stressors. But we are not nearly as familiar with the idea that our brain responds acutely to social stressors—like the ones we find in our workplace—in the same way. Dr. De Baets’s research indicates that re-evaluating and revising decisions to account for how the brain actually operates will make the difference between project failure and success.”
~John Cable
PROJECT PLANNING
DESIGNED WITH COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Between your ears is a super-computer, designed for your self-preservation. It’s a complex machine with tremendous capabilities, but it’s the self-preservation that limits its full logical capacity.
When we focus on reducing those limitations, we can accelerate human progress through projects.
GOOD PLANNING ACCELERATES DELIVERY
THE PREDICTION MODALITIES
Project planning, forecasting, and risk analysis is all about prediction, or looking forward. NeuralPlan has designed planning in project management around the way humans think, which also means reformatting, resequencing, and adding processes that account for thinking errors.
It’s designing planning around the brain.
It’s designing project planning around the brain
Cognitive Science in Government Planning
Cognitive and behavioral science in project planning started with the research of Nobel Laureate Dr. Daniel Kahneman in 1977 with a study called Intuitive Prediction: Biases and Corrective Procedures funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Since then, other government agencies have started to use more and more of this research. NeuralPlan uses the same science, only for the first time it’s all in one place in a cohesive training and certification.
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Department of Defense
Some of the research that started it all in the field of cognitive science in planning began in the Department of Defense with the work of Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and his research partner Amos Tversky in 1977.
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NASA
NASA has probably researched the planning fallacy and cognitive and behavioral contributors to planning errors more than most. The link below is just one example of how government is starting to see the value of cognitive science in planning.
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Department of Energy
The Department of Energy has been using cognitive and behavioral science in safety and climate change for some time, but recently has started investigating its uses in project management through its sponsored contractors initiatives.
Be the human behavior expert in your project, with the NPPQ Master Planner Credential
Ready to take the next step? Start learning today,
at the Institute for Neuro & Behavioral Project Management
> More reliable and accurate schedule milestones
> Increased scope capture
> More projects delivered closer to budget
> Reduced risk realization
> Higher client trust
The human cognition behind planning errors is something you can master.
Imagine what you could do with knowledge of the behavioral science side of project planning…
NeuralPlan fills in the missing link in traditional planning: the brain.
Gain the knowledge of why plans fail, and how to improve.
The researchers that wrote NeuralPlan
Over a decade of combined study of applicable concepts, 4 years of research specific to project planning, and 2 years of writing, culminating in the most exhaustive work to date on the application of cognitive science to project planning, forecasting, and risk.
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Dr. Josh Ramirez, PMP
Josh holds a masters degree in project management and a Ph.D. with research that focuses on combining behavioral science with project management. He also has two decades of project management experience and teaches project management at Columbia Basin College in the United States.
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Dr. Shari De Baets
Shari holds a masters degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology and a Ph.D. with research that focuses on human judgment in prediction and forecasting, and the interaction of man and machine in forecasting. She is a senior post-doc researcher at Ghent University in Belgium.
“The planning fallacy is that you make a plan, which is usually a best-case scenario. Then you assume that the outcome will follow your plan, even when you should know better.”
— Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences and cognitive scientist
The Behavioral Project Management Modalities
The Behavioral Project Management (BPM) modalities can be thought of as the different areas of the discipline in which performance enhancement exists and resides. Learning the sciences associated with behavior, psychology, cognition, neuroscience, etc. are sometimes assumed to be strictly confined to learning skills about interacting with other people; however, that is only a fraction of the science.
Skills are only a small part, and interaction with other people (social psychology) is an even smaller slice of that domain. When considering all factors human, we must understand that everything we touch, see, hear, and interact with is an area where errors can occur and potential improvements can be made. Here’s where the research shows we can start redesigning project management, and NeuralPlan has already started blazing the trail…
Processes.
Design the project management processes to account for common human factors.
Metrics.
Measure human factors and redesign standard project metrics to identify behavioral trends in what has been done and improve decisions in what is to come.
Interfaces.
Design human interfaces, such as software, so that people default to decisions that result in better project predictions and delivery.
Skills.
And last, but not least, teaching project professionals skills to mitigate their own individual biases and work through interactions with other humans.
You’ll see planning, forecasting, and risk from a whole new perspective!
