Complex Projects as Systems

Technological advances are the main drivers that keep connecting the world. Project management of the 21st century will need to reflect these rapid changes in technology and society. The exponential growth of data storage, data processing and communication capabilities lead also to an exponentially growing complexity of projects. “Complexity” can be defined as the state of being intricately interconnected.

Beyond Linearity

It multiplies the connections between actors of social systems, many of which are projects. Project team members, contractors, finance departments, procurement departments, IT staff, suppliers, customers and business partners all have many more touch points than ever before. Even more so, they interact with each other in a much shorter time frame, with communication being the equivalent of instantaneous.

As a result, many projects react more like systems and networks than traditional models showing linear relationships and top-down hierarchies that can be controlled. This has serious consequences for the practicalities of project management.

Above all, even though they are organized and follow rules, systems cannot be “controlled.” Rules can be applied and project infrastructure can be set up. But the results of actions in complex networks cannot be centrally determined. They are non-linear, have positive and negative feedback loops, and emergent properties that may lead to sudden and dramatic developments and system reactions that are unexpected and cannot be planned for.

What Control?

These characteristics are identified through systems and networks analysis and complexity theory, but can also be observed in real life. Projects often seem to go well until some small, unexpected event causes sudden challenges. Sometimes negative feedback loops, slow-moving centralized processes, and a lack of communication and data sharing will dramatically increase the problems and turn the “perfect project” into a perceived failure.

How can that be prevented? The likely answer is the advent of decentralized but fully connected systems. They can no longer be “managed” top-down and through linear processes. Rather they will be “channeled” using rules and self-organizing platforms and frameworks. Such frameworks may consist of technologies and applications that are set up in a specific way, and rules can be interpreted as process definitions.

The challenge for managers is to focus on results and group behavior, by adapting to the notion that “controlling projects” is no more possible in the future than “controlling the Internet” is feasible today. They need to use advanced tools and approaches to cope. Even the most advanced technical platforms and applications available today cannot resolve all these challenges. However, they can be, and need to be, set up to significantly increase the capabilities of self-regulating mechanisms.

Self-Organizing Entities

The nature of 21st Century project and program management solutions is similar to social networks found on the Internet: “Systems” emulating chaotic self-organizing organisms. Dealing with such systems can be called complex project management.

Humans find dealing with complexity and chaos both easy and difficult. As living beings and part of complex social organisms, we find it natural to collaborate and communicate in environments that do not seem formally structured. One example is the Internet and the social networking triggered by its capabilities.

In business though we expect structure. Peter Drucker was only one of the people demanding that. Since most of us grew up surrounded by bureaucracies, we expect formal organization in hierarchies and linear processes. What we often miss is that complex and chaotic systems are structured as well. They just do it differently.

This is the challenge of the 21st century business and project management world, enabling and channeling structures in systems while still leveraging the inherent power of technological and societal advances.