By John Tiso - Graduate Student, Harvard University

 “Houston, we have a problem”. Although this phrase is ubiquitous, few understand its origination. In the 1950’s, while working for the famous think tank, the Rand Corporation, social scientists Charles Kepner and Benjamin Tregoe started the development of their ‘rational processes’. These four processes have been used to define and have been subsequently refined to support the decision making power of today’s managers. A key function of the KT rational processes is that they facilitate the removal of emotion in management decisions. So, the famous Apollo 13 saying is actually a Kepner-Tregoe (KT) Situation Appraisal statement.

Why would a project manager need rational processes? “For example, although the United States spent over $250 billion each year on IT application development projects, 31 percent of these projects were cancelled before completion. Almost 53 percent were completed, but they were over budget and over schedule and did not meet the original specifications” (Marchewka, 2006, p. 5).  Staggering figures such as these indicate that we, as IT project managers, need rational process to analyze all phases of projects, as well as potential problems in the projects and programs we manage.

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