Making the Complex Seem Simple

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  Complexity   Organizational Project Management   Scheduling   Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)  

How many of out there have ever had a simple project? Really? It seems hard to believe that there are any at all. When you make the effort to determine if a project is actually complex, you can often figure it out pretty quickly based on a combination of the following criteria…

Technical Components
There is no escaping the fact that in an IT environment, there will be complex analysis, tasks and development. If you aren’t creating something from scratch, then you are building elaborate and/or specialized add-ons or fixes.

For hardware and software projects, it means such things as engineering solutions (broad and granular), complicated and integrated systems and interactions, multiple platforms and interfaces, and of course connecting to other projects being worked on in parallel. There are issues related to resource availability, testing, usability…the list goes on.

Budgetary Components
When it comes to anything related to finances, everything gets complex very quickly. There isn’t enough, there is too much being spent inappropriately, it needs to be shifted around, there are new demands requiring funding, etc. That’s assuming you even get your hands on some—obtaining it in the first place has its own significant (if not greater) challenges.

However, one could have a great case laid out for a project—including a well-…

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