Exploring the Complexity of Projects: Implications of Complexity Theory for Project Management Practice

by Svetlana Cicmil, Lynn Crawford, Kurt A. Richardson

Exploring the Complexity of Implications of Complexity Theory for Project Management Practice explores the process and findings of the implications of the complexity theory for project management theory and practice. The golden triangle (project deadline, budget and output) makes the standard definition of project management processes, skills and knowledge paradoxical and divorced from practice. This monograph contains research of management processes and capabilities in innovative project settings and highlights the challenges in contemporary project management practice. This research suggests that in order to define and conceptualize project complexity, the building blocks of project must be more properly defined. These • Individual and group relationships • Individual and group cohesion • Definition of key performance indicators • Sources of project failure In practical terms, this research aims to propose and encourage a critical but constructive way of explaining, debating, and deliberating project management and project performance issues that can lead to a wider awareness, knowledge, and development of skills and competencies that match the complexity of projects as experienced by practitioners in contemporary organizations. In Exploring the Complexity of Implications of Complexity Theory for Project Management Practice , project managers will find the realities of project management and the strategies to incorporate the complexity of a project into the original scope.

91 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Gloria · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book uses literary references and empirical data to explore complexity and its relationship to projects and project managers.

The literary research covers complexity theory from scientific, social, and organizational theory. The theory is reinforced with empirical data from interviews with 70 participants in 27 projects on three continents. The complex responsive processes of relating in organizations (CRPR) is used as a basis to investigate and explain the relationship between complexity and projects.

For a project manager, it provides a theoretical grounding for explaining why project managers should not try to control project outcomes as an outside management force. It suggests that project managers should as an integral team participant focus on communication as the key means of influencing a project’s outcome.

The book could be a useful source for anyone seeking to understand why building a project plan at the beginning of a project when most things are uncertain makes it difficult to use project management processes to control the project outcome against that plan.