Complexity and Project Management: A General Overview

As projects have become more and more complex, there has been an increasing concern about the concept of project complexity. An understanding of project complexity and how it might be managed is of significant importance for project managers because of the differences associated with decision-making and goal attainment that are related to complexity. Complexity influences project planning and control; it can hinder the clear identification of goals and objectives, it can affect the selection of an appropriate project organization form, or it can even affect project outcomes. Identifying the different concepts associated to project complexity, its main factors and characteristics, the different types of project complexity, and the main project complexity models, can be of great support in assisting the global project management community. In this paper, we give a general overview of how complexity has been investigated by the project management community and propose several ideas to address this topic in the future.

[1]  J. M. Beyer,et al.  A Reexamination of the Relations between Size and Various Components of Organizational Complexity. , 1979 .

[2]  Andrew W Gale,et al.  Conceptualising uncertainty in safety-critical projects: A practitioner perspective , 2015 .

[3]  Aaron J. Shenhar,et al.  One Size Does Not Fit All Projects: Exploring Classical Contingency Domains , 2001, Manag. Sci..

[4]  Sheheryar Mohsin Qureshi,et al.  Analysing the organizational factors of project complexity using structural equation modelling , 2015 .

[5]  K. Sund,et al.  Managing Tensions Between New and Existing Business Models , 2016 .

[6]  Terry Williams,et al.  Assessing and moving on from the dominant project management discourse in the light of project overruns , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.

[7]  Julien Pollack,et al.  The changing paradigms of project management , 2007 .

[8]  Lynn Crawford,et al.  Fundamental uncertainties in projects and the scope of project management , 2006 .

[9]  Peter Bennett,et al.  Uncertainty and conflict: Combining conflict analysis and strategic choice , 1990 .

[10]  Ludovic-Alexandre Vidal,et al.  Understanding project complexity: implications on project management , 2008, Kybernetes.

[11]  Aaron J. Shenhar,et al.  Simultaneous management: The key to excellence in capital projects , 1996 .

[12]  Aaron J. Shenhar,et al.  Toward a typological theory of project management , 1996 .

[13]  A. Jaafari.  Project Management in the Age of Complexity and Change , 2003 .

[14]  Mohan V. Tatikonda,et al.  Technology novelty, project complexity, and product development project execution success: a deeper look at task uncertainty in product innovation , 2000, IEEE Trans. Engineering Management.

[15]  P. Lawrence,et al.  Differentiation and Integration in Complex Organizations , 1967 .

[16]  John W. Priest,et al.  Product Development and Design for Manufacturing: A Collaborative Approach to Producibility and Reliability, Second Edition, , 2001 .

[17]  Eddie Custovic.  Engineering management: old story, new demands , 2015, IEEE Engineering Management Review.

[18]  T. Cooke‐Davies,et al.  We're not in Kansas Anymore, Toto: Mapping the Strange Landscape of Complexity Theory, and Its Relationship to Project Management , 2007, IEEE Engineering Management Review.

[19]  Todd Little,et al.  Context-adaptive agility: managing complexity and uncertainty , 2005, IEEE Software.

[20]  Alexander Verbraeck,et al.  Grasping project complexity in large engineering projects: The TOE (Technical, Organizational and Environmental) framework , 2011 .

[21]  Gerhard Girmscheid,et al.  The inherent complexity of large scale engineering projects , 2008 .

[22]  John H Payne,et al.  Management of multiple simultaneous projects: a state-of-the-art review , 1995 .

[23]  R. Stacey.  Complexity and Creativity in Organizations , 1996 .

[24]  R Dewar,et al.  Size, technology, complexity, and structural differentiation: toward a theoretical synthesis. , 1978, Administrative science quarterly.

[25]  D. Snowden,et al.  A leader's framework for decision making , 2007 .

[26]  James D. Thompson.  Organizations in Action: Social Science Bases of Administrative Theory , 1967 .

[27]  Yan Jin,et al.  Simulating Project Work Processes and Organizations: Toward a Micro-Contingency Theory of Organizational Design , 1999 .

[28]  Terry Williams,et al.  The Need for New Paradigms for Complex Projects , 1999 .

[29]  Christoph H. Loch,et al.  Selectionism and Learning in Projects with Complexity and Unforeseeable Uncertainty , 2004, Manag. Sci..

[30]  Peter W. G. Morris,et al.  Science, objective knowledge and the theory of project management , 2002 .

[31]  Tyson R. Browning,et al.  A conceptual framework for tackling knowable unknown unknowns in project management , 2014 .

[32]  Boulevard de Constance,et al.  On Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Complexity in Project Management , 2002 .

[33]  Mark Vandenbosch,et al.  Project Complexity and Efforts to Reduce Product Development Cycle Time , 1999 .

[34]  B. Kumar,et al.  A complexity index for the design process , 2001 .

[35]  Henry Mintzberg,et al.  The structuring of organizations : a synthesis of the research , 1980 .

[36]  Terry Williams,et al.  PMI Europe 2001 , 2002 .

[37]  David Baccarini,et al.  The concept of project complexity—a review , 1996 .

[38]  J. R. Turner,et al.  Goals-and-methods matrix: coping with projects with ill defined goals and/or methods of achieving them , 1993 .

[39]  Jeffrey S. Russell,et al.  CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT OF PROJECT PERFORMANCE , 1997 .

[40]  P. Meyer,et al.  Emissions from international shipping in the Belgian part of the North Sea and the Belgian seaports , 2008 .

[41]  K. I. Gidado,et al.  Project complexity: The focal point of construction production planning , 1996 .

[42]  L. Ganapathy,et al.  Towards a Complexity Framework for Managing Projects , 2007 .

[43]  Kurt A. Richardson,et al.  Managing Complex Organizations: Complexity Thinking and the Science and Art of Management , 2008 .

[44]  Kim Wikström,et al.  Defining uncertainty in projects – a new perspective , 2008 .

[45]  Harvey Maylor,et al.  Now, let's make it really complex (complicated): A systematic review of the complexities of projects , 2011 .

[46]  Harvey Maylor,et al.  Managerial Complexity in Project-Based Operations: A Grounded Model and Its Implications for Practice , 2008 .

[47]  Chris Chapman,et al.  Transforming project risk management into project uncertainty management , 2003 .

[48]  Rodney Turner,et al.  A model of project complexity : distinguishing dimensions of complexity from severity , 2009 .

[49]  Ralf Müller,et al.  Linking complexity and leadership competences of project managers , 2007 .

[50]  A.J. Shenhar.  Strategic project management: the new framework , 1999, PICMET '99: Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology. Proceedings Vol-1: Book of Summaries (IEEE Cat. No.99CH36310).

[51]  Ludovic-Alexandre Vidal,et al.  Measuring project complexity using the Analytic Hierarchy Process , 2011 .

[52]  Albert R. Meyer,et al.  The Equivalence Problem for Regular Expressions with Squaring Requires Exponential Space , 1972, SWAT.

[53]  Andrew Davies,et al.  Managing Structural and Dynamic Complexity: A Tale of Two Projects , 2014 .

[54]  E. Rebentisch,et al.  Learning the Art of Business Improvisation , 2016 .

[55]  David L. McLain,et al.  Quantifying Project Characteristics Related to Uncertainty , 2009 .

[56]  Saji Gopinath,et al.  Are complexity and uncertainty distinct concepts in project management? A taxonomical examination from literature , 2016 .

[57]  Holly Parsons-Hann,et al.  Measuring Requirements Complexity to Increase the Probability of Project Success , 2005, ICEIS.