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Complexity and Project Management, Lectura # 2 - Mapa Mental Carmen María…
Complexity and Project Management
Importance of Complexity to the Project Management Process
It can affect the selection of an appropiate project organization form and experience requirements of management personnel
It can be used as criteria in the selection of suitable project management arrangement
It hinders the clear identification of goals and objectives of major projects
It can affect different project outcomes (time, cost, quality, safety, etc)
It influences project planning, coordination, and control
Definitions of Project Complexity
Luhmannian System Theory:
Complexity is the sum of the of: differentiation of functions between project participants, dependendies between systems and subsystems, and the consequential impact of a decision field.
Custovic:
That property of a system which makes it difficult to formulate its overall behaviuor in a given language.
Vidal and Marle:
That property of a project which makes it difficult to understand, foresee, and keep under control its overall behaviour.
Project Complexity Factors and Characteristics
Sources of Complexity
Level of scientific and technological knowledge required
Employed resources
Environment
Number of different parts in the workflow
Necessary but Nonsufficient Conditions for Project Complexity
Context dependence
Independence
Size
Variety
Interrelations within the project system
Factors that seem to contribute to the perceptions of project complexity
Management process
Interfaces and interdependencies
Goals
Stakeholder
Technology
Work practices
Time
Drivers of project complexity
Size:
Consider it as an indication of complexity, the organizational structure of the project should be over a minimum critical size and their element need to be interrelated
Interdependencie and interralations:
An event in an interconnected structure can cause totally unknown effects on another entity inside the structure
Goals and objectives:
They must be adequated and properly defined both at a strategic and at an operational level
Stakeholders:
The number of project participants and how the information flows between them are a key factor affecting project complexity
Management practices:
Relationship between project participants, suppliers, overlapping of activities, methods, and techniques are factors that affect project complexity
Division of labor:
Adding project organizational structure by dividing labor, the way for personnel selection, and the level of pressure on this personel to achieve project objectives are factors that increase project complexity
Technology:
Task scope or the variety of tasks that need to be accomplished is the most critical dimension of technology
Concurrent engineering:
It breaks down functional and departamental barriers by integrating team members with different discipline backgounds often known as cross-functional teams
Globalization and context dependence:
Globalization boots complexity by the erosion of boundaries, higher mobility, herarchy, and higher dynamics.
Diversity:
A higher number of elements and a higher variety across elements increase complexity
Ambiguity:
It expressess uncertainty of meaning in which multiple interpretations are plausible
Flux:
Flux is affected by external and internal influences. It also implies constant change and adaption to changing conditions
Types of Project Complexity
Approaches of complexity
Field of Descriptive Complexity:
Considers complexity as an intrinsic property of a system, a vision which invited researchers to try to quantify or measure complexity
Field of Perceived Complexity:
Considers complexity as subjective, since the complexity of a system is improperly understood through the perception of an observer
Types of Project Complexity
Task Complexity:
Refers to the density of the units, casual links, and consequenses within a temporal and spatial frame
Social Complexity:
Describes the number of members communicating and working with each other and the differentiation of their tasks
Cultural Complexity:
Compresses the history, experience, and sense-making processes of different groups that joint the effort in a project
Overall and Task Complexity:
Can be managed by a functional organization with decentralized decision-making and social complexity by trust and commitment
Types of Project Complexity Based on the Source Complexity
Structural Complexity:
Difficulty in managing and keeping track of the high number of interconnected tasks and activities
Technical Complexity:
Complexity arises because of the uncertainty regarding the outcome for many independent design solutions
Directional Complexity:
Found in change projects where the direction of the project is not understood and when it is clear that something must be done to improve a problematic situation
Temporal Complexity:
Results in projects where due to unexpected legislative changes of rapid changes in technology, there is a high level of uncertainty regarding future constraints that could destabilize the project
Project Complexity Models
Goals and Methods Matrix
This is based on how well defined are the goals and methods of achieving these goals in a project
Four types of projects
Type 1:
Projects in which goals and methods are well-defined and understood
Type 2:
Projects with well-defined goals but poorly defined methods
Type 3:
Projects planned in life-cycle stages with poorly defined goals but well-defined methods
Type 4:
Projects with no defined goals and no defined methods
Stacey's Agreement and Certainty Matrix
Analyze complexity in two dimensions, the degree of certainty and the level of agreement
Developed matrix with the following zones
Close to agreement, close to certainty:
Projects where traditional project management techniques work well and the goal is to identify the right process to maximize efficiency and effectiveness
Far from agreement, close to certainty:
Coalitions, compromise, and negotiation are used to solve this type of situations
Close to agreements, far from certainty:
Traditional project management techniques may not work and leadership approaches must be used to solve this type of situations
Far from agreement far from certainty:
Zone of anarchy with a high level of uncertainty and where traditional management techniques will not work
William's Model
Project complexity is characterized by two dimensions, structural complexity and uncertainty, each of one having two subdimensions, number and interdependency of elements, and uncertainty in goals and methods.
Kahane's Approach
He introduces the U-process as a methodology for addressing complex challenges and distinguishes complexity in three ways.
Dymanic Complexity:
The cause and effect of complexity are afr apart and it is hard to grasp from first-hand experience
Generative Complexity:
A situation where the solution cannot be calculated in advance based only on what has worked in the past
Social Complexity:
The people involved who have different perspectives and interests must participate in creating and implementing the solution
Cynefin Desision-Making Framework
Allows executives to see new things from new viewpoints, assimilate complex concepts, and address real-world problems and opportunities
Five domains: simple, complicated, complex, chaotic, and disorder
Current and Future Approaches to Manage Complexity
Methods to address project complexity from different perspectives and approaches
Declerck and Eymery's method:
To analyze ill-structured problems
Turner and Cochrane's method:
Goals and methods matrix
Systems theory helps to understand how different aspects affect the project as a system
The incredibly fast-paced systems of today's business and social environment, characterized by discontinuity and change, force organizations to make decisions and take the corresponding actions based on multiple unknown variables
Long-cycle complex projects were run by autocratic leaders, adhered to a well-defined standardized, serial processing approach.
Short-cycle complex projects were run by project managers who used a more participative management style with many external sources of information.
Understanding how project managers deal with the different types of complexity and how they reply to these different types can help to prevent projects from failure.
Since projects exhibit the characteristics of complex systems, the method to manage them cannot be predicted in advance, it will emerge from the interactions between the project elements and the environment.
If there are limits to what we can know about our organization, there are limits to what we can achieve in a predetermined and planned way
Conclusions
When problems fundamentally dynamic are treated statically, delays and cost overruns are common
Traditional project management tools and techniques, based on the assumptions that a set of tasks can be discrete, with well-defined information, are often found inadequate
The traditional approaches that utilize a static approach provide project managers with unrealistic estimations ignoring multiple feedback processes and nonlinear relationships of the project
The interrelationships between the components of a project are more complex that is suggested by traditional techniques, which makes them inadequeate to the challenges of today's dynamic project environment
The new complex and dynamic environments require project managers to rethink the traditional definition of a project and the ways to manage it
Project managers must be able to make decisions in these dynamic yet unstable systems that are continuously changing and evolving in a random fashion
Complexity Influence in Projects
Positive
It's due to the apparition of phenomena that could not be predicted due to the sole knowing, even complete, of the behaviour and interactions of the elements of the system
Negative
In terms of difficulty to be understood and controlled, is because of the emergence of new properties that none of the elements of the system owns
Lectura # 2 - Mapa Mental
Carmen María Mok Zheng
2014008258