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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6. How have projects
changed?
 Scale and multi-disciplinary scope
 different and more: skills and capacity
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7. How have projects
changed?
 Resource management
 competing priorities
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8. How have projects
changed?
 Stakeholder management
 transparency and influence
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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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16. Addressing complexity:
Collaborate
 Globalization is just another system!
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17. Addressing complexity:
Resources are limited
 Recognize limited resources: reuse, share, etc.
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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