Managing Projects in a Complex Environment

The following text was my response to a post @ allpm.com with regard to "Managing Projects in a Complex Environment".

The person had identified a complex project having one or more of following attributes;

- Multiple project sub-components (complex project structure)
- Multiple resource pools (complex organisational structure)
- Multiple skillsets / disciplines (complex project target)
- Multiple sites - Multiple cultures / countries
- Multiple organisations (partnerships, co-developments)
- Multiple suppliers - Multiple customers

Response

Your observations / details on complexity are indeed practical and I completely agree with those observations.

Having agreed to what you have already detailed; I personally believe primarily the "complexity" has got introduced because of;
a) Dependency
b) Cultural differences
c) Time zone differences
d) Uncertainty, if I discount the skill shortage / mismatch, and size of resource pools for the time being.

Since there are multiple stakeholders, with varying (and sometime conflicting) interests, varying maturity levels, and may also have dependency on others for them to succeed, it would be impossible for any single entity to succeed without making other(s) succeed. The reason being, even if you complete your task / fulfill your commitments, the end result / outcome would still be eluding the program / project, if others fail to deliver.

The cultural differences and differences in time zones further aggravate the situation, as we have a situation where we have to deal with "emotional" challenges; and time zone differences would not be conducive in resolving those faster.

All these factors would lead to increased level of uncertainty; leading to increased complexity. Therefore, if we are able to bring down the level of uncertainty, I personally believe, we would also be able to bring down the complexity (under sighted scenario).

How do we do that? My analysis suggests that under these kind of situations, everything boils down to governance. The reason being, the followed engineering process and standards will be uniform across the program / project, and stakeholders; therefore, engineering is not the place, which needs the maximum attention. Instead, it is the governance, which needs your attention, under these scenarios.

For example, suppose I take the same example as sighted by you, however, modify it by this bit of information, i.e. “the program / project is being done by a single entity (read as vendor), however, through multiple delivery centers, spread across the world”.

Now, you would appreciate that though the single entity did not have the dependency on external (other) vendors, still it has to deal with cultural and time differences, dependency, and hence uncertainty. What essentially, I'm trying to bring out from this modification is the fact that the uncertainty is not because of multiple stakeholders, or engineering processes, instead it has been there because of dependency and cultural and time zone differences. The engineering processes can be standardized (and had already been) and everyone can be made to follow, however, the "soft" aspects would need something more than that.

I personally believe under these kind of situations, a formal, framework driven governance works the best. That is, you need to define the three attributes, namely, "Structure", "Functions", and "Practices".

What it essentially means is that you need to define, roles, descriptions, responsibilities, accountability to primary stakeholders / shareholders, values to be carried out etc., i.e. the "Structure" for your governance. How many levels within that, it all depends on the "need" of the program / project. Next you define the "What", i.e. what needs to be accomplished through governance when it comes to Finance, Risk, Delivery, Quality, Benefits, Resources, Issues etc., i.e. the "Functions" of your governance. Finally, you need to lay down the execution plans, i.e. "How", to achieve the "Whats", this will cover the "Practices" part of governance.

No doubt, it will increase you governance cost; however, with varying capabilities, and interests, what is another way to secure their commitments and cooperation? Therefore, if you have the governance in place, then it would be easy to track, monitor, and control.

Lastly, the two discounted items, i.e. number of resources and their skill sets. As you can see tackling those will not be as difficult as those would be part of your governance. Every stakeholder needs to define the needs and maturity (and preparedness) of the resources required for given task, and work towards fulfillment of that. The reason being, if they don't, they will miss on their targets / SLAs.

To summarize, a well laid out and functioning governance will help you in reducing the uncertainty and hence surprises under given scenario; which, in turn will provide positive push to given program / project. Further, the visibility to information within program / project can be increased (thereby reducing the uncertainty) by dashboard driven information dissemination. The structure of dashboard will depend upon the program needs; however, one in line with “Balanced Scorecard” will definitely be preferable. As this way of communication will bring out the “Advanced / Early Warnings”, to help you in substantially reducing the “reactive” executions.

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