Foreword

The question often asked about project management is “why do so many projects fail?” Project management looks easy enough, and the concept of project management is quite simple: find a need, create a plan to meet that need, execute the plan, and you’re done!

The first step, identifying the need, is often the most straightforward. This may be the requirement for a new product or service that will meet market demand, or it may reflect a need to increase effectiveness or efficiency to improve competitiveness. These are “what” is needed. “How” to meet the need, or the plan to achieve it, is a bit more of a challenge, and the execution of the plan can be excruciatingly difficult. Both these factors depend on the complexity of the project.

Business today is often complex and moves so rapidly that developing a solution to meet an organizational or market need (the plan) is equally, if not more, complex. Because of this complexity, the success rate for projects is abysmally low. According to the Standish Group, only about one-third of all IT projects are successfully completed as originally envisioned. Many are outright failures, are terminated before completion, or are never implemented even if they are completed because they fail to meet customer or user expectations. Why is this? Kitty Hass has zeroed in on the correct answer to deal with this problem of project complexity. The answer is to do the right projects to begin with, and then to do them in the right way based on their complexity.

First of all, are the right projects being selected to be done? Who decides which are the right projects? With the scarce resources available in any organization, and the amount and pace of change in business today, the demand is for increased acknowledgment—and acceptance—of responsibility by senior management for which projects are to be undertaken. The next question is, does management really know which are the right projects? The answer demands that senior management identify organizational goals, develop the strategies that will achieve those goals, and then choose the projects that will ensure that the organization will meet those strategies and achieve the goals. Kitty defines an approach for senior management to use after the right projects to conduct are identified.

Once the right projects are identified, the question of how they are to be done becomes critical; this is, as Kitty has found, a major problem in today’s world of project management. In many cases traditional project management models don’t work in the current business environment. As Kitty clearly shows, 21st century projects require new thinking and a new approach. She provides the insight for this approach to projects by treating them as complex adaptive systems that are themselves part of an even larger complex system, the global economy. To succeed, complex projects must follow an approach that involves complexity thinking, which she describes in terms of complexity theory. The result is a new Project Complexity Model that can be used as the framework for determining the approach needed to manage a project based on the level of complexity involved.

Kitty’s Project Complexity Model provides a framework for diagnosing complexity on a wide variety of projects, ranging from small, independent, short projects, to medium size and medium complexity projects, through large, highly complex, longer projects. The model guides the project manager through a three-step process to ensure that (1) the appropriate project leader is assigned, (2) the appropriate project cycle is selected, and (3) the appropriate management style is chosen for the complexity dimensions involved. To guide the reader, detailed suggestions are provided for completing each of these steps to meet specific project needs.

Anyone—indeed, everyone—facing the challenging task of managing one of today’s complex projects will find much in this book to aid them in their efforts to carry out successful projects.

Gerald M. Mulenburg, DBA

National Aeronautics and Space Administration