Research on project portfolio selection problem considering project synergy under multiple mental accounts

In the face of complex project relationships and the need to achieve multiple strategic objectives, project portfolio selection is increasingly becoming a key issue for the survival and development of enterprises. However, the individual behavior of decision-makers will directly affect the result of decision-making, and then affect the achievement of enterprise strategy. Considering the limited rationality of decision-makers and the synergy between projects, this paper constructs a project portfolio selection model based on multiple mental accounts of strategic objectives. Firstly, multiple mental accounts are constructed for different strategic objectives and utility functions are constructed to describe the achievement of each mental account. Then, the learning-forgetting curve and the approach degree theory are used to study the synergistic relationship between the projects, and the contrast model is set to analyze the influence of the synergistic effect. Finally, a numerical example is given to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results show that the selected project portfolio can meet the different mental account needs of decision-makers to achieve the strategic objectives of enterprises; Through the cooperative relationship between projects, the utility value of each mental account is greatly improved. The method proposed in this paper is helpful for decision-makers to delimit different psychological accounts according to actual needs to make portfolio decisions when facing multiple strategic objectives.