3. As it applies to project management
Game theory was first developed to predict situations where one player does better at another's expense. „Today, game theory has expanded to treat a wide range of situations and interactions, including human as well as non- human players (computers, for example). As such, game theory is an excellent tool for project management“ (BRIGHTTHUBPM©2012).
Project managers manage the links between related projects, decide on resource priorities and report progress of the project to the appropriate people. This authority, responsibility and accountability is an important and demanding role. This mostly involves dealing with people; negotiating with them and arriving at a solution that keeps the project moving forward. It is in these negotiations that game theory can be an essential tool for project management, because game theory is a mathematical method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others. More formally, it is “the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers.” (WIKIPEDIA©2015)
To bring it into perspective for a project professional, Game Theory is about establishing and planning your project to be a ‘game’ that allows you to maximize gains and minimize losses, but it is based on applying decision making not only in terms of your own knowledge and strategies but more importantly also those of others in the
‘game’ or project in order to ensure success. Applying this concept to every stakeholder in your project will help to see things in a radically new way, as it s described in (Toppenberg, 2011).
Project managers manage many different areas including the links between related projects; we decide on resource priorities and report progress of the project to the appropriate people. The authority, responsibility and accountability in this role make for an important and demanding role. As we know the activities we perform mostly involves dealing with people; negotiating with them and arriving at a solution that keeps the project moving forward. It is in these negotiations that game theory can be an essential tool for project management.
While playing the games can teach us much about how players interact in a specific setting, applying those rules and observations in real-life examples can be even more rewarding. For project professionals this can be helpful in many ways, says Bloch (2015).
There is no many research and application works trying to describe the game theory application in project management, especially its application to avoid communication risks at educational projects of different types and sizes, with respect to economic and management specifics of post-crisis Czech Republic.
Some details we can read mostly in internet sources, like (BRIGHTTHUBPM©2012) and (Hatfield, 2015) or (Toppenberg, 2011). For more information on Game Theory and to dig deeper into the application of game theory in business, “The Art of Strategy” by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuf is an excellent start. Very interesting paper by Gil Junqueira is retrived from http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/cutting-edge-project-management-what-game-theory- and-poker-can-teach-us.php. With the specifics of game theory application in solving the construction projects conflicts deals the paper published on the 6th International Strategic Management Conference in 2012 in Spain, that is retrived from http://www.academia.edu/1857937/Application_of_Game_Theory_Approach_in_Solving_the_Construction_P roject_Conflicts.