On the Subject of Rebecca Winston’s December PMWT viewpoints article on Complexity

24 December 2011

Dear Editor,

Rebecca’s article ‘Is Complex Always in the Eye of the Beholder?’ misses one key point.

If a project manager can convince his/her customers and employers their project is ‘complex’ then the project manager gets more wiggle room for failure and if the project is successful can claim to be a ‘complex project manager’ who is obviously someone deserving of a pay rise or some other accolade… which in turn begs the question should complex project managers be certified by nice men in white coats?????  

Complexity when based in complexity theory has a number of facets including non-linearity (you cannot predict the result of an action) and emergence. These are factors in every human interaction and relationship and every project has human interaction and relationships. Therefore as Rebecca surmises, every project does have a degree of complexity in the same way every project has a degree of technical difficulty (complication) and a degree of size.

All of these factors are relative to both the project manager, and the performing organization’s perception.  An IT shop that typically runs projects of $100k to $200k would see a $1 million project as ‘big’.  The same value project to a typical building developer turning out $20 million to $50 million projects would be minute. Complexity is no different.

The concept of ‘complex projects’ being special or different is simply a fad supported by a limited number of organizations and individuals trying to differentiate their commercial and academic offering in a tight market. The simple fact is every project has a degree of complexity and any project manager who ignores this is heading for failure. It’s not special, it is normal and anyone using ‘complexity’ as an excuse for failure should be seen in exactly the same light as someone using technical difficulty or sheer size. In some circumstances the excuse may be valid (ie, the issues were not foreseeable), in some circumstances the personnel selection may be at fault (ie, the organization needs to improve its processes), in others the PM simply screwed up.

Where I believe there is enormous scope for improvement is in the way organizations develop and appoint managers to projects. The four dimensions of a project, size, technical difficulty, uncertainty and complexity have all been identified and discussed, as has the interactions between these four facets of every project. Where organizations consistently fail their project teams is not using this information to understand the overall difficulty of each project they undertake; and to use the assessment to develop, support and appoint people with the right level of capability to manage the challenge.  If this is news to anyone, my White Paper, Project Size and Categorisation http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/WhitePapers/WP1072_
Project_Size.pdf provides a brief overview of the four dimensions, from this starting pint organizations need to develop a framework that suites their environment.

Happy New Year everyone!!

Patrick Weaver.
Mosaic Project Services Pty Ltd
Melbourne, Australia
http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au
training@mosaicprojects.com.au

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