Why it’s time to become an optioneer

Move over Marvel superheroes. One of the hottest heroes when it comes to project management is optioneering, yet how much do you know about it? The discipline of appraising your options is frequently overlooked in the frenzy to deliver your project, yet options appraisal can help you find the right solution.

But where should you start? Options appraisal is not merely brainstorming or generating some bad ideas to elevate your favoured one. Nor is it something you do only at the start of the project. The term ‘optioneering’ has become increasingly popular, implying a voyage of rigorous, objective and evidence-based discovery throughout the life cycle.

Drawing on many principles from iterative or agile approaches to project delivery, optioneering allows for adjustments, improvements and course corrections throughout the project. These principles are as applicable in traditional physical project environments using linear approaches as they are in technology-led agile projects.

A two-step Double Diamond process

Options appraisal is an ongoing, two-step process that identifies the options available before objectively assessing them to decide which is best. The goal is simple: to ensure that the chosen option delivers the most value, aligns with your strategic objectives and meets the needs of your stakeholders.

To do this, you need to accept that all ideas are incomplete at their inception and are open to challenge and interrogation. An incomplete idea isn’t a bad idea; good ideas will stay good even through rigorous analysis. However, good ideas can easily become bad ideas without this scrutiny.

The Design Council has developed The Double Diamond, a visual representation of the design process that consists of four stages: Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver. In following this process, you are ultimately trying to answer three questions:

1. What risks are associated with each option, and what mitigations can be put in place to manage those risks
2. Do we have the right resources in terms of both quality and quantity to deliver this option?
3. Does this align with our stakeholders’ needs and expectations?

A voyage of discovery

The Discover stage of an options appraisal involves divergent thinking and is enhanced by having a diverse range of inputs. Psychological safety is important, providing a free space to expand options and explore problem spaces without fear of retribution.

From Discover, you move into the Define phase, where you begin to refine and define the challenge or problem and gain clarity and agreement on what problem or need the eventual solution needs to address or meet. This involves convergent thinking.

Mind expanding

Having clearly defined the problem, you enter the Develop phase, where you can now expand your thinking again and explore and identify solution options. As you frame the viable options that are available, your favoured option may disappear or become modified, which is why providing evidence to support your arguments is important.

The process should be objective and open, and avoid a situation where decisions are influenced only by the most powerful or the loudest people in the room; avoiding the influence of the highest-paid person’s opinion (or HiPPO).

This process is designed to identify gaps, risks and synergies. Prototyping and user testing can help generate the data and feedback needed to evaluate ideas.

Time to deliver

Finally, having thoroughly analysed your options and selected the best, you can move to Deliver. By this point, you will have identified potential risks. You may not have mitigated against them becoming issues, but you will be more aware of their impact. This stage involves more convergent thinking to home in on the chosen solution, while being confident that alternative options have been thoroughly tested. 
You may also identify how far you’re prepared to go with the project before reassessing the options available. This process need not be confrontational, but it requires a collaborative, safe space and recognition that failure is about learning.

Allow for slow thinking

Bent Flyvbjerg, the first BT Professor and inaugural Chair of Major Programme Management at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, argues that project success is often determined by the thinking time put into project planning. By countering our natural human urge to think swiftly, we must slow ourselves down to carefully consider what needs to be done.

“A big project is the kind of thing that is not suited for fast thinking,” he says. “The fact that it is big means that it has big consequences… you actually need to think slow to be successful.” Giving yourself the space to think through every aspect of a project with the consideration it deserves puts you in a great position to deliver the project swiftly.

So, despite our instinct for delivery and our leaders’ desire to cement their place in history through their one big idea, it is always important to keep in mind that delivering the wrong option quickly is far more painful and time-consuming than delivering the best option slowly.

APM Learning has a module on options analysis, available now to APM members. To find out more about optioneering, read the autumn 2025 issue of APM’s Project journal.

 

You may also be interested in:

• Learn about options analysis through the APM Learning platform
• APM podcast: Eastenders at Elstree Studios
• With our focus on options analysis next week, look out for the APM learning module and podcast which can be found on all your streaming platforms.