Navigating Project Complexity to Build Resilience in International Development Projects

  Complexity   International Development   Risk Management  

Objectives: The PMI-funded research project Navigating Project Complexity to Build Resilience in International Development Projects seeks to explore what makes international development projects (for example, World Bank-funded projects) complex to manage and how to identify adaptive approaches to build resilience within the project ecosystem, enabling recovery from disruptions to improve project success.

Findings: The research confirms that international development projects are characterized by interrelated structural and sociopolitical complexities, leading over time to emergent complexities and thus project disruptions; hence the need for resilience practices for project recovery.

A Response to Complexity Framework was thus proposed, which captures interactions between dimensions of complexity with project management practices, integrates proactive awareness, absorptive and adaptive capacity as a response to project complexity, and thereby builds resilience capability.

Problems: The inability to identify complexity factors that cause disruptions in the global landscape in which projects are delivered—and the inadequacy of the standard management practices applied—remain key challenges for practitioners.

Case Study: The lived experiences of project funders, designers and implementers was captured on four projects: Two infrastructure projects in Ghana …

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