COMPLEXITY IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

I. COMPLEXITY DEFINITION

It is a characteristic of a program or project or its environment that how it is difficult to manage due to human behavior, system behavior, uncertainty, ambiguity or technological innovation.

Complexity can emerge at any point during the project.

It be present is shapes of events or conditions that affect value, scope, communications, stakeholders, risk, and technological innovation.

Complex project does not necessarily mean a project of a big budget or a complicated scope.

Complexity itself is a perception of an individual based on personal experience, observation and skill.

It is more accurate to describe a project as containing complexity than describe it as a complex project because it may contain some complexity elements and others may contain many.

II. COMPLEXITY SOURCES

Sources of complexity includes but not limited to:

1. Human behavior:

It is the interaction between the conduction, attitudes and experience of people.

It contributes to complexity by introducing elements of subjectivity.

2. System behavior:

It is the result of dynamic interdependencies between project elements.

3. Uncertainty:

Uncertainty is the lack of understanding and awareness of one or more of the followings:

• issues to address
• events to manage
• paths to follow
• solutions to pursue

It includes unknown unknowns that are outside of existing knowledge or experience.

Uncertainty can blur causal relationships and situations.

4. Ambiguity:

Ambiguity is a state of being unclear about not knowing what to expect or how to comprehend a situation.

It can arise from:

• Having many options
• Lack of clarity on the optimal choice
• Emerging issues
• Subjective situations

Ambiguity can blur causal relationships and situations.

5. Technological innovation:

Some new technological innovations to be used or incorporated in the project or system.

These new technological innovations can cause disruption to some elements of the project or its systems such as products, services, ways of working, processes, tools, techniques, procedures, etc.

The uncertainty of how to use and incorporated these innovations contributes to complexity.

III. COMPLEXITY EFFECTS

The effect of complexity is that reduces the ability to:

• make accurate predictions about the likelihood of expected outcome.
• identify the outcomes might emerge.

IV. ADDRESSING COMPLEXITY

To enable complexity addressing to help the project team to successfully deliver the project, continually:

• evaluate and navigate project complexity
• identify elements of complexity
• identify complexity addressing methods that reduce the amount or impact of complexity

Complexity addressing methods that reduce the amount or impact of complexity (7 methods):

i- Systems-Based Complexity Solutions:

1. Decoupling (Separating the parts of the overall system).

2. Simulation (Making use of information from similar situations).

ii- Process-Based Complexity Solutions:

3. Iterating (delivering in small amounts by incrementally adding features and frequently checking at different checkpoints).

4. Engaging stakeholders (Soliciting frequent feedback from stakeholders).

5. Fail-Safe (build in redundancy or elements that can provide a graceful degradation of functionality in failure event).

iii- Reframing Complexity Solution:

6. Diversification such as:

- (viewing the situations from diverse perspectives).

- (encouraging new ideas from stakeholders and SMEs via workshops, surveys, consulting, etc.).

7. Balancing (Utilizing new data sources and types to provide new insights).

The following knowledges and experiences increase the project team’s ability to navigate complexity when it emerges:

• knowledge about systems thinking
• knowledge about complex adaptive systems
• experience from past project work
• knowledge from experimentation and continuous learning related to system interaction