Planning complex projects for value creation: a discussion guide for decision-makers

Planning complex projects with a long-term value perspective is crucial in today's rapidly evolving landscape. This is even more true in capital-intensive, high-tech sectors like space, quantum, cloud, and artificial intelligence, where complex projects create value for actors initially not even considered as stakeholders. Recent literature calls for planning projects taking a “value-based perspective”. Although intellectually compelling, this perspective lacks an actionable discussion guide for identifying key items in planning complex projects, hindering the operationalization of value-based complex project planning. To this end, we conducted 12 interviews with senior experts to gather insights on value-based complex project planning, using complex space projects as the empirical context. We developed a discussion guide, named “PACTO”, to support and facilitate value-based planning of complex projects. PACTO is structured around five key items: 1) Purpose – shifting from project outcomes to project value, 2) Actors – expanding from primary project stakeholders to a broader actor ecosystem, 3) Costs and benefits – transitioning from purely economic value to encompassing social and environmental value, 4) Time – moving from a single project phase perspective to a whole project lifecycle approach, and 5) Oversight – evolving from closed project governance to open project governance.