Front-End Assessment and the Decision to Finance a Project

Abstract

Reason and experiences are illustrated by the following small experiment. A bottle lies on a window sill, its bottom against the window and sunshine outside. A bee and a fly are inside the bottle, trying to escape. What happens? The intelligent bee flies towards the light. It buzzes constantly against the bottom of the bottle, until it drops dead of dehydration and exhaustion. The fly, with its lower intelligence, flies randomly, in all directions, until it by chance flies out through the narrow bottleneck and escapes. Chance triumphs over reason.

The question of which concept is the best concerns more than the systematic, rational identification and assessment of various alternatives. In the front-end phase, the interests and prioritizations of various parties become evident, intervene and lead to decisions that often are far from that which appeared logical and rational at the outset. Hence, understanding this process is as vital as questions regarding the information base and the rational analysis choice of method.

Logic is a means to arrive at the wrong conclusion with complete certainty.

–Gudmund Hernes