Complex project – or poorly scoped? - Dr Liz Varga
1. "Complex project – or poorly scoped?"
Dr Liz Varga liz.varga@cranfield.ac.uk
28th Nov 2013
APM - a PMC SIG conversation
2. Objectives
Present my definition of a complex project
and when simple projects work
Demonstrate what has changed to make
projects complex
Describe the consequences of complex
projects
Explain how complexity science might help
identify the causes of complexity
Suggest interventions to embrace complexity
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3. A Complex Project
A simple project is one where no change
arises in the project scope, its plan, its
delivery, in the environment, and in the
intended project outcomes. A complex
project is otherwise.
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4. A simple project
Relies on negative feedback which will
maintain the status quo
Regulation
Approval
Monitoring
Budget control
…
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5. How have projects
stayed the same?
Deliverables and work packages
Schedules and dependencies
Risks and Issues
Change Control
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9. How have projects
changed?
Rapid context change
(political, economic, social, technological, en
vironmental)
Creating challenge to deliver initial objectives
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10. How have projects
changed?
Integrated systems
Overlapping decision-support tools and
dependency; information overload
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11. Outcomes of these
changes:
Loss of control and ambiguity
Networked system with inter-dependencies and
autonomy
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12. Outcomes of these
changes:
Loss of purpose
Exogenous events can and do have impact
(HBR, 2011, Learning to live with complexity)
Changing environment creates demands for new
objectives, project pace and objectives change
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13. Outcomes of these
changes:
Predicted outcomes fail to materialize
Basis of business cases is ‘ceteris paribus’ but
inter-connections and innovations lead to nonlinearities
The vital thing to know about the great monetary
experiments began in 2008 – now underway in
Japan, Europe, and America — is that these are
experiments. There are no clear precedents, and certainly
no successful precedents. Even the conditions are unique:
stratospheric debt levels (both public and private) — aging
populations — and a global financial system like nothing
before.
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14. Causes of complexity
Socio-economic systems are open
Projects ‘meddle’ with the dynamic structures
which are in place: during planning,
construction, delivery and operation
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15. Addressing complexity:
Don’t be surprised
Inter-connectivity gives rise to multiple
feedback loops which create emergent, nonlinear outcomes.
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18. Addressing complexity:
Expect to change
Objectives, scope, outcomes need continuous reevaluation because the effects of non-linearities
can’t be accurately predicted
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19. Addressing complexity:
Innovate
Be diverse, innovate and take opportunities:
importance of knowledge and learning and creating
a vision of the future
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20. Addressing complexity –
plan for survival
Principle
Interdependence
Cyclical Flow of Resources
Partnership and Cooperation
Flexibility
Diversity
Description
All members of an ecological community are
connected in a vast and intricate network of
relationships, the web of life via multiple feedback
loops that create non-linear patterns of response
Nutrients are recycled so that the waste of one species
becomes food for another, or conversely, the outputs of
one market-driven entity may threaten the survival of
another
In co-evolution in which the adaptations of multiple
species are mutually interdependent
Continual adjustment to feedback in response to
constantly changing conditions
Involving pluralistic resilience in the sense that a
“diverse ecosystem” tends to contain “many species
with overlapping ecological functions that can partially
replace one another”.
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21. "Complex project - or poorly scoped?"
Dr Liz Varga liz.varga@cranfield.ac.uk
28th Nov 2013
APM - a PMC SIG conversation