Decision Theory?

Question

I am desperatley searching for the term used to describe a specific decision scenario. I will use an example below to try and convey what I'm speaking of.

For example, you take over a project that is in ruins. The previous project manager made a bad decision on some financing impacting the viability of the project.

When you take over the project you must look beyond what the consequences of the previous actions and not let them interfere with future decsions.

This act of disregarding the bad decsions and not letting them influence the future decision has a specific name. The bad decision also has a specific nam....Thats what I'm searching for. Please help.

Thanks for the responses....however, I cannot find the answer.

Answer 1

The bad decisions would fall under what I would call sunk costs, which is just another word for spilt milk, nothing can be done about it. I don't remember the name for the process going forward, it's mainly a cost-benfit analysis considering only marginal costs and marginal benefits.

Answer 2

Try this:

http://www.answers.com/topic/multi-criteria-decision-analysis

Answer 3

It could be 'Drawing a line under past decisions' (or something less emotive than 'decisions', if you can think of one that doesn't look like blame-storming).