Complex Projects: The Art and Science

  ProjectsAtWork  

The PMBOK Guide and other best-practice frameworks provide considerable detail on schedule, budget and risk management techniques, but much less guidance on how to manage the people-related challenges that threaten the execution of these plans, and are the most commonly cited reasons for the failure of complex change initiatives.

The nature of project management is changing. More and more, project managers are required to take responsibility for initiatives which have multiple stakeholders; team members drawn from multiple organizations and a need for work to be undertaken in a variety of different locations —  often crossing national boundaries and sometimes spanning the globe. The drivers of change are numerous and interrelated: the globalization of economic activity and a related growth in multinational corporations or international collaborative ventures; advances in information and communications technologies which have removed the necessity for face-to-face meetings and shared offices, and the impact of the recent economic recession which has increased the use of sub-contracting and freelance workers, to name but a few relevant factors. Even within countries, collaborative projects involving a number of different stakeholder organizations and multi-organizational, dispersed project teams have become increasingly common. Frequently, such project teams are also highly …

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