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PPMP20014LectureWeek8v01a.pdf

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PPMP 20014

Complex Project Management

Lecture 8 for Week 8

Prepared by:

Richard Egelstaff PMP, Ph.D (c), MBA (Adv), BA

Discipline Leader for Project Management,

School of Engineering & Technology

Higher Education Division

CQUniversity Rockhampton

Topics

• Where are we so far?

• Week’s Stuff

– Readings

– Study

– Reflections & Discussions

– Assignments

Learning Outcomes

1. Explain the causes, environments, and properties of complex projects.

2. Identify different tools and techniques to aid a project manager manage complex projects.

3. Critically analyse whether different projects cases are complex projects.

4. Formulate, argue and defend a strategy that a project manager can apply to a complex project case study.

5. In a team analyse the root causes of failure with a number of sample complex project cases.

PPMP20014

Complex Project Management

THE WEEK’S READINGS AND STUDY

Week 8 - Topic: Human Behavior and Complexity.

• Mandatory Readings:

– Aspects of Complexity: Managing Projects in a

Complex World (2011)

• Chapter 8 Human Behavior and Complexity by Terry Cooke-

Davies

• Optional Readings

– none

• 7th Discussion Forum

Chapter 8 Human Behavior and Complexity by Terry

Cooke-Davies

• Why Human Behavior Matters

• Relationships on Projects

• Understanding Human Behavior – Quirks of Thinking

• Seeing Patterns and Meaning in Data That is Actually Random

• Drawing Unsupported Conclusions from Incomplete and Inconclusive Data

• Seeing What We Expect To See When the Data Is Actually Ambiguous or Inconsistent

• Seeing What We Want To See

• Resisting Learning

• Attribution Errors

• The Neurological Basis to Persistent Habits

• Getting To the Truth of a Situation

Chapter 8 Human Behavior and Complexity by Terry

Cooke-Davies

• The objective of the chapter is to suggest that

the study of human behavior should lie at the

heart of project management studies, if we are

to understand complexity in projects.

• It concludes that “Human society is a ‘network of

lies and deceptions’ that would collapse under

the weight of too much honesty. From the fairy

tales our parents told us to the propaganda our

governments feed us, human beings spend their

lives surrounded by pretense.”

7th Discussion Forum

• In Chapter 7: Beyond Competence: Developing Managers of Complex Projects, Lynn Crawford and Ed Hoffman (in the book by Terry Cooke-Davies) discuss the means of developing reflective practitioners (p. 92). In that section they state:

– Experience and education cannot be directly equated to each other. For some experiences are mis- educative. Any experience is mis-educative that has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience.” For learning from experience to be effective, the learner must be self-aware and have a degree of humility that may be missing in some practitioners especially if they believe and have certifications to attest to their "competence” as project managers.

• Do you agree with Crawford and Hoffman?

• Please expand on your thoughts regarding the world of project complexities and whether they contain inherent characteristics that are mis-educative? Is it not the wickedness discussed by Lynelle Briggs and that "project management training that reduces all the tasks of a project manager to a simple and straightforward rational, linear, and deterministic set of predefined processes and activities, tends to increase the challenges of systemicity by developing project personnel who are not on the lookout for the project's interconnectedness" (Chapter 1 p. 6)? Which, as a consequence means that the competence approach will in fact increase the complexities of a project rather than reducing them in an orderly manner!

Assessment 2: Written Assessment 50%

• Your task is to consider:- – the causes, environments, and properties of complex projects;

– different tools and techniques to aid a project manager manage complex projects;

– the degree and nature of the projects cases discussed in the unit in the context of the theories and ideas related to complex projects.

• Then you must write an essay describing how you consider the points above are related to:- – projects with lots of parts and interconnections;

– projects that contain a great deal of uncertainty;

– project that are heavily time-constrained.

• You should illustrate your points by identifying what are the causes, theories, tools and techniques, that might be relevant to complex projects. You should use examples taken from case studies and examples discussed during the unit.

• 5,000 words due in Week 12

Summary