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Chapter 1

Complexity in Project Management and the Management

of Complex Projects Terry Cooke-Davies

In some ways, complexity is rather like love: Everybody has experiences of it and knows what it is, but ask them to defi ne precisely what they mean by it and you will end up with a broad range of defi nitions. In the realm of project management, the terms “complex” and “complexity” have been cropping up extensively during the past few years.

In order to shed some light on the topic, Project Management Institute hosted a series of four Academic-Business Roundtable Discussions and Workshops on the topic of “Complexity in Project Management and the Management of Complex Projects.” These sessions were held in Atlanta, GA, Sydney, Australia, St. George’s, Malta, and São Paulo, Brazil. Nearly 100 attendees at each location, heard from a panel of six invited presenters. The participants were then invited to take part in an open discussion and workshop session. The presenters were composed of business- people, project management practitioners, academics, and consultants.

These events, and the lively discussions that took place during them, were the inspiration for this book. Presenters and delegates offered insights that were as var- ied in their topics as they were well grounded in practice, in theory or in both. In the course of the dialogue, it emerged that managing projects in an increasingly complex world is both a growing challenge, and one for which no easy solutions exist. The fi eld itself is multifaceted, continually evolving and in pressing need of expert practitioners, supportive organizational environments, and well-grounded research to support both.

This fi rst chapter provides an understanding of complexity in project manage- ment as it emerged from the presentations and discussions at each of the four events. Made up, as it is, of the insights from 19 distinguished practitioners, managers, consultants, and academics, it inevitably has something of the “scatter gun” about it. It also does not include references and citations, since the points it is making all emerged during the events themselves from one of the participants. For ease of reading, a single “voice” has been adopted for the narrative, to present the breadth

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of ideas as coherently as possible. Subsequent chapters, which each elaborate on a particular theme introduced during the discussions, have the added depth and un- derstanding of the expert authors and refer to the source of the information.

What Do People Mean When They Talk About Complexity? As far as projects are concerned, there is a difference between “complex” and “com- plicated.” It doesn’t help to look up the dictionary defi nitions of the words, since each tends to be defi ned in terms of the other. If sense is to be made of the topic, then it is important to understand the concepts that people tend to have in mind when they use the terms, rather than educate them in one or the other particular dictionary defi nitions.

Similarly, although the term “complex” has a technical meaning (or, to be pre- cise, several different ones) when it is applied to “complex systems” in the worlds of science and technology, these technical defi nitions (which will be explored in Chapter 4) should also be distinguished from the everyday sense in which people speak about complex projects. Furthermore, they should seek to assess the degree of “complexity” that any particular project or program can be said to possess.

You could describe a system or a project as “complicated” if it has a large num- ber of interconnected and interdependent parts, whereas complex means something more. The Latin roots of the word imply “woven together,” so that changes in one part have an impact on the others. If this “woven togetherness” is combined with changes that can occur within individual elements, then a project can be said to be complex if it consists of many interdependent parts, each of which can change in ways that are not totally predictable, and which can then have unpredictable im- pacts on other elements that are themselves capable of change.

You could say that a modern saloon car or a laptop is complicated, whereas a Formula 1 racing car or the human brain is complex. As one of the contributors said, “If you don’t understand what will happen when you kick it—that’s complex.”

Aside from being a memorable way of describing complexity, this particular description also introduces a second important concept alongside the interaction of multiple parts—that of human “understanding.” Many activities or fi elds of knowl- edge appear to be complex when they are fi rst encountered, but as understanding and experience grow, they appear much less complex to the accomplished practitio- ner. To many beginner drivers or people with no knowledge of the workings of an internal combustion engine, a saloon car is daunting in its complexity, whereas it holds few mysteries for the drivers and engineers in a Formula 1 racing team. Thus, a single project might appear to be more or less complex to different people associ- ated with it, such as the project sponsor or the project manager.

Complexity, then, is relative to an individual’s understanding. But what about collective understanding? There are limits to the understanding of groups of people, organizations, professions, and even of humanity itself. This would suggest that complexity is a characteristic that is always encountered in endeavors or activities at the frontier of the knowledge or technology of the people who are undertaking the activity. Projects to build ancient wonders of the world such as the Pyramids

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or Stonehenge must have appeared complex in their time, but look very simple in contrast with NASA’s programs leading to human fl ight to the moon, or some of the intricate and complex building and infrastructure projects that have been un- dertaken in the modern era.

On the other hand, the different components that make up the global economy are themselves complex elements that change unpredictably and then interact in unpredictable ways. As a result, in the postindustrial global world, apparently sim- ple concepts such as a single integrated business appear to be increasingly complex, diffi cult to manage, and prone to failure.

The tools and techniques of modern project management were developed to help people and organizations reduce the amount of complexity in projects by breaking complex activities down into simpler ones wherever possible—thereby designing complexity out of the project as far as possible and leaving the resulting activity simply complicated. Removing complexity remains a laudable goal, and it should be the fi rst resort for many project managers. However, a combination of the am- bition that keeps humanity constantly pressing onward to new frontiers, coupled with increasing complexity in the global economy, ensures that there will always be projects that present their promoters and implementers with a high degree of complexity.

If projects with a substantial amount of complexity are also likely to have as- pects that need to be managed in ways that extend the traditional tools and tech- niques of project management, then just what factors can be identifi ed that cause a particular project to be “complex” in this common sense use of the term? And what challenges do these pose for project managers?

What Causes Complexity, and Why Is It a Problem? Many organizations have developed their own means of assessing how complex a project is for varied reasons, such as assisting with the appointment of appropriate management or governance resources or positioning it within a portfolio of projects that are being considered for funding. Typically, such assessment schemes consider factors such as technology, size and scale, supply chain, geography, time pressure, stakeholders, and so on. The lists are long and varied.

Research into categorization systems has shown that organizations typically rate a project using, on average, 5 attributes, although the number of attributes can vary from as few as 2 to as many as 12. Factors assessed may include project scope, technical complexity, number of functions and skills involved, organizational in- volvement, level of ambiguity/uncertainty, number of sites locations or countries, organizational impact, clarity of goals and objectives, or source and location of risks.

Some organizations, recognizing that complexity depends on understanding, consider how familiar it is with the particular type, scale, or technology of the project.

It is worth looking into the different factors in this long and varied list and that can be said to cause complexity, and consequently, problems for project managers.

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Unhelpful Behavior

There is widespread agreement among practitioners that one factor that makes projects complex is the interaction of human beings who are faced with making complex decisions. Complexity occurs when people with different interests, loyal- ties, cultures, and interactions with one another are put together to deliver a par- ticular project or program. This can be seen as variants on “organizational politics,” but it is actually more widespread than that.

All but the simplest projects involve teams of people coming together to ac- complish goals, and when physical teams come together, unpredictable behavior emerges. The larger the team, and the larger the number of teams involved, the more complex the project. People are not always rational in their decision making, and tribal instincts are deeply rooted in humankind, which makes the behavior of individual teams liable to evolve and be diffi cult to predict. In addition, the interac- tions between different teams are themselves unpredictable, especially if there are differences in national, organizational, or professional culture.

These differences are often magnifi ed by the different perspectives of the people involved: Those who are implementing the projects, those who will use the prod- ucts or services that result from the project, those who stand to benefi t from the success of the project, or those who establish the regulatory environment for the project.

Complexities like these in human behavior can reveal themselves in many dif- ferent ways, for example: Clients of projects can cause changes to project scope, delay important decisions, interfere with the project implementation team, or com- plicate actions and decisions through a lack of trust; the workforce that is imple- menting the project can become disincentivized through poor morale or exhausted through excessive schedule pressure; and managers can react inappropriately to cost, schedule, scope, or quality pressures. Indeed, in projects with a high degree of complexity, communication can be a signifi cant cause of failure. This is perhaps not surprising, since the need to communicate, relate, and interact is a basic human need. Such processes of relating are complex and responsive, because interaction among humans is always unpredictable to some extent.

Anyone who has ever been involved in large-scale organizational change will most likely have experienced for himself or herself what happens when the rumor begins to circulate that reorganization is imminent. The complex human system begins to evolve, to react in unpredictable ways, and to develop its own response in anticipation of the announcement. On the other hand, when a fl eet of contractors’ vehicles rolls up to start a major roadwork scheme with an inanimate system such as a road network, the roads don’t react!

Project managers can expect to be faced with such behavioral complexity, but their own response can create additional complexity of its own. Responding to dis- ruption by taking decisions that seek to recover the original planned schedule can lead to feedback loops, with unintended consequences and even, on occasions, cata- strophic failure. This response is a particular manifestation of a phenomenon that is well understood in the systems view of the world, and one that is a major cause of complexity in projects: systemicity.

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COMPLEXITY IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND THE MANAGEMENT OF COMPLEX PROJECTS

Failure to Appreciate Systemicity

When people talk about projects being complex, as we have seen, they are talk- ing about not only the number of separate elements in the project but also about how these interact. In other words, about the behavior of the project as a “whole system”—what could be called the “systemicity” of the project.

When project managers look at projects, they are used to breaking them down into their constituent parts (e.g., using work breakdown structures). However, when feedback loops begin to develop, quite simple behaviors in each element can combine and cause complex behavior to emerge for the system as a whole. Per- haps the easiest of these effects to imagine is positive reinforcing loops, or “vicious circles.” It is frequently encountered in amateur events making somewhat inexpert use of public address systems. The voice of the announcer is amplifi ed through the loudspeakers, and this louder voice is picked up by the microphone and amplifi ed further, and so on until the familiar ear-splitting “howl” results.

Similar effects can be experienced on complex projects, as unintended conse- quences from well-intended decisions result in the magnifi cation and escalation of the original problems, until catastrophic failure results.

A pattern can be detected: project risks or perturbations create interactions that feed on themselves causing vicious circles; project managers respond to the disrup- tion by making decisions that seek to retain planned delivery and planned quality, usually by accelerating certain actions; these actions are also disruptions that, in turn, must be contained within a shorter time scale, therefore, increasing the power of the vicious circles.

Models

Each of us interacts with the world as we understand it to be, based on our own mental “models” of what reality is and how it works. Most commonly, these models are more implicit than explicit, and they are likely to differ in important respects from other people’s models. This diversity of models can be a major factor in causing complexity in projects.

Arising out of our models, we use symbols that are created, reproduced, and transformed by our interactions, and out of these symbols, we create and re-create meaning. That meaning in turn informs and directs what we do, so if our models are left intuitive and unexamined, they are likely to lead to unforeseen systemic effects at interfaces within the project.

Here, creating explicit shared models throughout the project team can help to improve understanding of the complexity inherent in the project. Conversely, hav- ing inadequate models that, for example, fail to recognize the extent of complexity in the project makes dealing with it that much harder.

Simplistic Project Management

One mental model that most project managers bring with them to the man- agement of complex projects and programs is their understanding of the tools and techniques of project management. Where these are incomplete or inappropriate,

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they can add to project complexity. For example, a simplistic model of project risk management that fails to recognize systemic risks caused by the interactions be- tween individual risks, or that fails to identify the signifi cant risks, can contribute directly to a need for the kind of decision making and behavior that causes the kind of issues with systemicity that have already been described.

Complexity can also arise because of assumptions that are inherent in tradi- tional models of project management and that are incompatible with actual systems and practices in the organizational environment of the specifi c project or program. For example, project managers may lack the authority necessary to manage the project effectively.

None of this, of course, is any excuse for failing to implement the “basics” of project management and use the tools and techniques in an appropriate manner to reduce avoidable complexity.

Over-Ambitious Strategic Management

A number of factors lead to increased complexity in projects in business and government. At least in the Western economies, the work force is aging while si- multaneously the number and value of projects being undertaken are increasing.

Against this background, projects are managed and governed within a context created by the management and governance systems of the promoting and imple- menting organizations, and the resulting “system of systems” adds a further dimen- sion to the systemicity that has already been discussed.

So too does the number of interactions (or “ripple effects”) between projects undertaken within a project portfolio aimed to accomplish strategic business objec- tives, particularly when a number of projects independently are each intended to create business change that has to be managed and integrated at the point of deliv- ery by the same business unit’s operational staff.

Other Factors

The foregoing may be fi ve of the most prominent factors that come to mind when seeking to understand the causes of complexity, but there are many others as well.

For example, project management training that reduces all the tasks of a project manager to a simple and straightforward rational, linear, and deterministic set of predefi ned processes and activities, tends to increase the challenges of systemicity by developing project personnel who are not on the lookout for the project’s inter- connectedness.

In the global marketplace today, supply chains frequently consist of people and organizations from very different geographical and ethnic cultures, which place great challenges on the social systems that need to be created within a complex project. In addition, the same forces that lead to such culturally diverse supply chains place great pressure on the expectations of superior project results, creating what often turns out to be unrealistic stakeholder expectations and can lead to time pressure and resultant systemic problems and/or stress on members of the project team with a consequential increase in unhelpful behavior.

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In general terms, insights from the study of complexity in the life sciences sug- gests that there is a natural tendency for all organisms (including humankind and its “social” organisms such as project teams) to evolve complex responses to chal- lenges that they encounter in their environment. Which, taken together with the causes we have just examined, provide a compelling argument for why there is a pressing need for a coherent research agenda to understand both the causes of complexity, and what can be done to prevent it resulting in problems, waste, and economic and social failure. That is why Chapter 12 of this book is so important.

In the meantime, however, it appears that many of the factors that contribute to complexity can cause consequential problems for practitioners of project manage- ment are also the factors that hold out the promise of both mining the benefi ts from it and minimizing its harmful consequences.

How Can Practitioners and Organizations Best Respond To Complexity in Projects? Perhaps the most important observation about responding positively to complexity in projects is that the response should come from both the organization and from individual practitioners. To respond positively, there is a need for transformational leadership of the complex project or program, collective creativity to develop the system that is right for the particular project, shared knowledge among all those involved in the project, and processes that are adapted and adaptive to the project needs.

This kind of organizational and personal leadership is the measure by which one can engage, embrace, and drive to effect positive infl uences in delivering on strategy in the face of complexity. It is a leadership that recognizes that wherever possible, simplicity is the preferred option—possibly even elegance.

A great deal can be achieved by the rigorous and adaptive application of project management such that the fundamentals of a project manager who is skilled in leadership, a project controls system that is systemically sound, team members who know how they fi t in and what they have to do, and well-conducted commu- nication and people skills. But doing so in a way that doesn’t create unwelcome complexity requires the fi rst of the factors that are critical to success in managing complexity in projects, developing suffi cient practitioners with the right competen- cies to deliver the whole portfolio of strategic projects.

Developing Practitioners

There is general agreement that good managers of complex projects are not born with skills they need, but rather that they learn them and perfect them over time. They develop a tacit sense of what needs to be done and become proactive in doing it. These skills are learned over time, much as a craft is learned, through the acquisi- tion of experience with the help of mentorship. It is appropriate to talk about crafts- manship—the old system of mentoring or apprenticeship where the tacit knowledge of an elder can be passed on to the pupil. A craft skill is a memory embedded in your very being. It takes guidance and time to acquire the skill. Therefore, it is not a mat- ter of training people how to do something; rather it is the repetitive and improving nature of honing practices to perfection.

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As has been discussed, there is a shortage of people who are capable of leading large, complex projects and programs. With this in mind, Australian, U.K., and U.S. governments and senior representatives of the defense industry have supported an initiative to improve the international community’s capability to deliver very complex projects across all industry sectors. It includes not only a competency standard for use as a framework for assessing and developing managers of complex projects but also an executive master’s degree and continuing professional develop- ment in complex project management. This program allows people to think about what they do (as project managers) for an entire year. It provides employers with valuable experience and credentials, not one or the other; allows project manag- ers an opportunity to develop a language for complex project management; and provides project managers with a credential that can develop a positive correlation with competent practice over time through the ongoing evaluation of the perfor- mance of credential holders.

The program acknowledges that too often industry expects engineers to go to college for their degree but they are not given a complex project to manage as soon as they qualify. However, all too often there comes a time when overnight they are given one to manage. That can be harmful for both the individual and the organi- zation, whereas what is needed is awareness that people’s experiences in this fi eld should be developed only when they are ready to accept more diffi cult (complex) projects. After all, in the medical profession, a new doctor may have knowledge but is not going to be allowed to do surgery on someone until he or she has gone through a residency program for the specialty.

Not every organization will be in a position to support such a master’s degree program, which, in any case, can reach only a fi nite number of candidates each year. There is a real need to recognize that developing a workforce capable of delivering a portfolio of complex projects requires more than acquiring a set of technical skills and competencies from a mentor over time. Many of the attributes required to man- age complex projects successfully are directly connected to emotional intelligence and interpersonal abilities. For example, one factor that seems to be important is something called “ego resilience.” Project managers need big egos if they are to believe that they can get the project done, yet need small egos to get out of the way and let people do what they need to do to get the project done. Therefore, the development program needs to contain elements such as this ego resilience. It is also a question of the project managers’ comfort zone—they need to be comfortable managing up and around in the environment rather than just managing technical aspects of a project.

Other development needs include understanding cultural differences on a deep level to bring out the best from multicultural teams; focusing on how to organize teams, which people should be put together to deal with such cultural develop- ments; and understanding all the commercial and risk management techniques that are necessary to deal with complex projects.

Finally, it is important to understand not only the skills that are needed, but also how they can be acquired. How do practitioners get better at learning skills? Learning from experience on projects presents a diffi cult challenge. The diffi cult part is mapping out what happened and what went wrong and learning the com-

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plex lessons, and yet unless this is done, any lessons learned are likely to be trivial or mistaken.

Appropriate Project Management

Perhaps not surprisingly, since modern project management had its birth in the ambitious and (then) complex projects of the post–World War II technology systems development, project management itself is seen as a powerful antidote to complex- ity. After all, the modular design of a project management system, together with the modular design of the system that was the project’s output, was explicitly developed to reduce complexity to manageable proportions.

Not all projects are equal, of course, and allowances need to be made to ac- knowledge that different types of projects have different characteristics. For ex- ample, in R&D projects, initial estimates of cost are far more diffi cult to make than in (say) refurbishment projects.

There are also some organizational practices in the implementation of proj- ect management processes that can help to combat unwelcome complexity. Proj- ect management offi ces (PMOs), for example, can reduce unintentional complexity in project management implementation if they are responsible for implementing standards in portfolio management and program management as well as project management. Similarly, careful attention to the relative authority of line managers and project managers can help. The aim is to strike the right balance between those processes that need to be tightly controlled and rigorously followed, and those that are better applied fl exibly.

How project scope is defi ned has a big impact on how complex the project ulti- mately is. Some organizations have reported taking the stance that anything that can affect a project should be considered as part of the project, so there is no “macro” environment. In other words, as many external infl uences as possible are brought within the scope of the project. However, since there is considerable evidence that smaller projects of shorter duration are signifi cantly easier to control than larger projects of longer duration, than this suggests that program management, combin- ing as it does a single integrated program with a succession of shorter more tightly defi ned projects, is an important weapon in the armory used to combat unwelcome complexity.

A second implication of this increased scope is that the design of processes for projects that affect a large public and use public funds will need to be established using highly visible independent bodies for such roles as conducting risk evaluation publicly and accountably.

Complexity in projects probably has its greatest impact in the sphere of risk management. What is called for is a shift toward “impact risk analysis.” This in- volves asking questions such as, “What is the effect if it continues? What is the effect of multiplicities of this?” Risk mapping, looking at overall pictures, can help and may help to scale up for larger, more complex projects, for which traditional risk analysis is often useless. Risk has to be monitored and tiered in a complex project or program, balancing threats with opportunity management and creating wealth not only for the business but also on individual projects. It can often be benefi cial for all

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potential stakeholders to be involved in the risk management process by identify- ing the risks that they are most conscious of and allowing proactive management to mitigate external problems.

Unfortunately, the current state of knowledge about projects that are late and overspend, does not distinguish clearly between projects that are well estimated and poorly managed, and those that have the opposite problems. It is clear, how- ever, that getting the estimate right in the fi rst place is important for success, and the more complex the project, the more challenging this task becomes.

Constructive Behavior

In examining the causes of complexity, people’s behavior and the nature of hu- man beings were well highlighted. The good news is that just as we collectively have the capacity to create unwelcome complexity, people are also capable of pos- sessing competencies that provide the antidote to complexity.

Competencies that can mitigate complexity include:

• Passive empathy. The level of consciousness in anticipating and predicting situations and taking control of them before they become problems.

• Active empathy. The ability to quickly and accurately act on or communicate the situation. Ability to get to the core of problems through analysis and to develop and present solutions.

• Persuasiveness. Ability to infl uence others by listening, assimilating, and communicating information. Ability to negotiate and be fl exible yet provide accurate information to key stakeholders.

Project managers accomplish their work only through other people—it is the members of the project team that actually deliver the end product. Therefore, it is particularly important to look for and develop those behaviors that encourage and build up the team. For example, it is important to give team members hope, so that they are motivated both to plan well and prepare for implementation and to carry out the actual implementation.

Especially on complex projects, it is a good idea to be prepared for things not to go according to plan, and if project managers fi nd things getting over their heads, they need to be prepared to ask for help. It is crucial and important to ask for help in those situations. To that end, the project manager needs to manage and collaborate with all stakeholder groups.

It is perhaps a truism to say that managing complexity in projects is all about managing people, both upward (through upper management and infl uential ex- ternal groups) as well as downward. What that implies, however, is that it would strongly benefi t the project management profession if it had a stronger theoretical foundation for understanding why people behave the way they do where projects are concerned.

The effective manager of complex projects also needs to be able to “turn things around” when the project gets into diffi culties, and this can often involve making some fundamental changes to the culture that has developed within the project team. They need the ability to step outside the culture . . . to start evolutionary

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change processes that are more adaptive; to look at change processes to enable the team to progress; to articulate visions, embody values and create the environment within each team member, where things can be accomplished; and last but not least, to get the team involved in the values of creating an environment where the project can succeed.

If it is appropriate, project managers today can call on many advanced com- munication technologies including not only information and communications technology (ICT) but also advanced tools such as social networking capabilities or products such as Second Life, which can transform the experience of working vir- tually. Used unwisely, such tools can add to the complexity of projects, and that is where the project manager needs to demonstrate not only sound judgment, but also leadership ability.

The task of managing a complex project combines project management with leadership. To that extent, it is at least as much about who you are as a project man- ager as it is about what you do. People that successfully manage complex projects have creativity, imagination, openness, and fl exibility, and they go with the fl ow. On the one hand, it is a good thing to schedule, but when the project is complex, it is important to let the creative juices come forward. Speak with successful manag- ers of complex projects and you will discover that they constantly have to have the big picture in mind, are willing to go into detail, and ask those burning, penetrating questions that cause people to see when they are off track.

It is only human to take setbacks personally when managing complex projects, and there are techniques for cooling down when you are emotionally upset. For ex- ample, trying to look beyond somebody who is antagonistic and responding neutrally to him or her. Teams can be extremely defensive because they got the project in trouble and if you get people really tired doing worthwhile work, it breaks down some of their defensiveness. This is not manipulative, but it helps people open their minds.

Like all effective leaders, the project manager needs to focus on the end goal of the project and manage all elements to that end, rather than managing the indi- vidual (technical) parts. It is in that context, that the effective manager of complex projects is able to understand the systemic implications of what is happening in different parts of the project.

Appropriate Response to Systemicity

Just as interactions between different elements of a project can have unintended consequences such as vicious circles, as we have seen, so understanding the sys- temicity of a complex project (the inter-relationships between the different ele- ments of the project) is central to a project manager’s ability to manage the project effi ciently and effectively. It is this understanding of “the whole” rather than “the sum of the parts” that enables the effective integration of processes, knowledge, and leadership.

This is an area where a skilled project manager can add value to an organization by connecting all the dots to help the successful delivery of complex projects.

Reference has already been made to the consequences of not having appropriate shared models of complexity, but in a positive sense, mapping techniques and dia-

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grams can aid in simplifying complex projects and demonstrating how the different parts combine. Feedback loops need to be understood, recognized, and evaluated for mitigating actions. Soft issues such as culture, language, leadership, and personal relationship management all contribute to a project’s complexity, so visual means of expressing them help with understanding and management. Indeed, if a complex project is understood as a complex system, then the activity of managing the project through taking informed decisions and the like is inseparable from the activity of learning about the project.

Understanding this systemicity is important when making upfront decisions with what inevitably turns out to be inadequate information, and so is building up that understanding as the project progresses and more information becomes avail- able. Sometimes actions or risks do not have the effect that was expected; in partic- ular, as we have seen, feedback loops must be recognized, analyzed, and controlled. For this to happen, the systemicity needs to be understood and modeled.

Frequently, such systemic interactions bring the project’s own systems and pro- cesses into direct contact with those of the promoting and implementing organi- zations, and this can bring many if not all of these different ways of mitigating complexity together in the form of the organizations’ strategic management.

Focused Strategic Management

The ripple effects caused by interactions between multiple projects have already been mentioned earlier in this chapter, as has the “system of systems” created by the interface between the project’s systems and those of its promoting and imple- menting organizations.

In a more positive light, however, the recognition by an organization of the stra- tegic importance of managing its complex projects effectively and effi ciently can lead to a signifi cant mitigation of unwelcome complexity. A major defense contractor, for example, can have as many as 15,000 projects being undertaken at any given time, and it is far from certain whether all of their project managers understand their proj- ect’s strategic intent and how it relates to the whole organization. This quantity of projects creates its own form of complexity, as has already been discussed, but it also creates the opportunity to create a “roadmap” of how the projects fi t into the overall picture from a stakeholder perspective, showing how the outcomes from each proj- ects contribute to the overall strategic success of the enterprise.

Similarly, the creation of an effective means of identifying the complexity of projects, and matching that to the competencies and skills of project managers is a signifi cant help in the strategic leadership of an organization’s most critical proj- ects. Indeed, to deliver strategy effectively, an organization needs the following: leadership in the form of supportive and appropriate behaviors within policies and applications processes; information that has integrity and meshes systemically; knowledge in the forms of appropriate interventions and experiential opportunities for people as was seen in the discussion of “behavior”; and processes that are not restrictive but rather, policies that are adaptive processes.

With this in place, there is a systemic and dynamic link between mission, man- agement of programs and projects, information, knowledge, learning, and under- standing in a given context and under given conditions.

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13

COMPLEXITY IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT AND THE MANAGEMENT OF COMPLEX PROJECTS

Other Considerations

These fi ve groups of actions that can be taken by either individuals or organiza- tions to exploit any opportunities presented by complexity, or to mitigate its unwel- come threats, will have the effect of linking more closely a complex project to the organizations that collectively provide its environment.

It is also good practice to have a C-level project manager to represent key proj- ects to the executive level of the organization, to further the connection. It also has the effect of educating business leadership in issues around the delivery of strategy, while educating project management to the complexities and pressures of business leadership.

In the course of such dialogue, it is likely that there will be an increase in evidence-based measurement of outcomes, which is surely desirable.

Is Complexity in Projects a “Friend” or a “Foe”? It is easy to form the opinion from reading much of the literature on complexity in project management that it is somehow undesirable—something to be resisted and overcome wherever possible.

That is, at best, a partial picture of reality. Some complexity is the inevitable consequence of changes in society, technology, and the global economy. As such, it is neither a friend nor a foe, but simply a feature of the environment within which the art and science of project management are practiced. Some complexity, as we have seen, is the result of humankind continually striving for goals that are more ambitious and as such, if the goals are well formed, they are surely to be embraced as a friend and welcomed for the benefi ts it can bring. What remains are those un- welcome aspects of complexity that are not properly understood, are not responded to sensitively and appropriately, or are the result of misguided management deci- sions in the fi rst place.

The remainder of this book is a serious attempt both to pull together what is currently known and understood about the topic, to help practitioners and their managers improve future practice, and to guide researchers into answering those questions that will best help to improve our understanding of this multifaceted topic. If it is successful in these goals, it will support the profession of project management as it seeks to adapt to inevitable complexity, to turn desirable com- plexity into tangible benefi ts, and to minimize the harmful effects of unwelcome complexity.

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