Working Group B: What principles are important in dealing with complexity?

[Andrew Pyke]

#15812

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As referenced by Davin today, here is the UK reference on collaboration – looks great!  https://www.instituteforcollaborativeworking.com/Research-and-Knowledge/Resource-Library

[Ian Mack]

#15799

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Hi Team – ATtached is the next version of the paper. I have not red-highlighted changes this time. The focus was to ensure I caught comments from Fellow responses to our survey, to incorporate some smaller additions after mining the transcript from our last meeting, and to clean up the Endnotes to Annex A. Ian

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[Stephen Grey]

#15734

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Version 2 of the diagram I drew up, with top cover included

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[Ian Mack]

#15733

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Thanks Davin – I now have more data/info miningt o tackle.  Ian

[Ian Mack]

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Thanks Stephen, these were indeed interesting.

For me, the argument (if valid) in the first video reinforces one reason why working with complexity is so tough. It requires critical thinking (the ability to effectively analyze information and form a judgment, by <u>being aware of your own biases and assumptions</u> when encountering information, and applying consistent standards when evaluating sources). Since part of the speaker’s argument is that our brains are lazy because they privilege efficiency, we will gravitate to our learned biases/beliefs (usually from a source we trust) over expending the work for critical thinking. And the same could apply to seniors as well when trying to get them to embrace critical thinking around adopting complexity approaches and in their decision-making.

The second video’s premise that learned language shapes how we think suggests to me the value of adopting a unitary language for addressing complexity, and in time (the sooner the better) developing the Complex Project Management Body of Knowledge (CPMBoK) to standardize how all practitioners think about this skill set – in other words, a unitary language could go a long ways to facilitating adoption.

Very much appreciated, as they could somewhat explain our ongoing challenges with adoption of complex project approaches – Ian

[Davin Shellshear]

#15729

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Hi Team B

Attached are my notes arising from our meeting on 25th August

Please note our agreement to read and prepare responses to the questions in Annex B. You will need to read the endnotes and Annex A to do this properly.

Happy reading

Davin Shellshear

• This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by Davin Shellshear.

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[Stephen Grey]

#15716

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This is a little off topic

It might spark a thought though

During our meeting yesterday, Daniel Kahneman was mentioned in relation to decision making

His ideas open up many avenues of thought, one of which, Thinking Fast and Slow, is set out in this talk he gave a few years ago through the Long Now Foundation – https://youtu.be/gmjgZF2HEwI

Paraphrasing their self description, the Long Now Foundation is a nonprofit intended to foster long-term thinking. They encourage imagination at the timescale of civilization (click on the first down arrow on their home page and then scroll down) — the next and last 10,000 years — a timespan they call the long now. A small part of this is to designate dates in a 10,000 year frame, 02022 being the year we are in.

You can see more of their work in the web site that hosts the video, such as The Clock of the Long Now, an immense mechanical monument, installed in a mountain, designed to keep accurate time for the next 10,000 years.

Their oblique viewpoint attracts a lot of interesting speakers. One of my favourites is Lera Boroditsky’s talk on How Language Shapes Thought, which shows how much we are bound into the way we have been taught to see and describe the world – https://youtu.be/I64RtGofPW8

[Ian Mack]

#15702

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Hi Rob and thanks for sharing this novel approach. I admit I am not a fan of scoring. I have attached a more logical approach to the Endnote on ‘risk treatment’ in Annex A of the paper, to better demonstrate how this could all fit together, something admittedly spurred on by Stephen’s recent pictogram approach. (In fact, if this was seen as an improvement, I could try to do for all Endnotes) Hopefully that might help you (and perhaps Richard who is working on a book chapter update).   Ian.

 

 

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[Robert McMartin]

#15676

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The Excel spreadsheet, I developed.  It is pretty basic, but I will add to it and improve.

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[Ian Mack]

#15675

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Hi Davin – Thanks for this. It will be a long slog to address this in the paper – if it was ‘dense’ already, it will indeed become worse. I will in time review and determine the practicalities of including (lots of concepts captured in many ICCPM and academic documents already) and where in the paper

Stephen – What a simple but useful overview! I think this is something to do more work on and includes in Annex B perhaps. Many thanks.

Team – ee you all soon, God willing for all of us. I now see the challenge as having so much material that someone needs to start righting that book. I for one will soon bow out of penmanship. Seriously, we will soon need to figure out how to format the rapidly growing ‘mound/mountain’.             Ian

[Davin Shellshear]

#15673

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Hi All,

Attached are the results of the survey up till 24 August 22

For your interest

Cheers

Davin Shellshear

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[Stephen Grey]

#15671

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I’m hoping to join in tomorrow – subject to how my jaw feels after having a tooth removed

In the meantime, I put together the attached diagram to help me make sense of the principles

I overlooked the top cover point that Ian raised recently but that fairly clearly fits in with governance and resourcing I think

I’m not proposing this as a WG product but I found it helped me grasp the dozen or so items that might be regarded as all connected to one another equally strongly

To see if I could expose a structure that made sense to me I considered which items require or benefit strongly from others

In broad terms, that’s the flow down the page

I am not so interested in the resultant diagram as in being able to think about the whole system sensibly and possible begin to ask: Where does a newcomer start?

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[Julia Cianci]

#15652

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Hi all,

 

Apologies for being absent for a few meetings – work swamped everything. I will aim to attend this week and I will try and catch up on the reading.

Julia

[Ian Mack]

#15642

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Hi Team – Trying to edit my last note –> I have taken the comments from the last meeting and significantly reworked the draft paper as you will see in the amount of print in red. The following indicates the key changes:

– I have reformatted it to merely list the principles in the body of the paper so as to make it less dense. What amplification on complexity-unique considerations (and endnotes) that was in the body has been moved to Annex A

– As well I have added a new Annex B to provide supplemental information on who might use the paper & how to turn it into action towards results. The annex also includes the key points of our earlier work on ‘wakening up seniors to complexity. Annex B also addresses potential impediments & ways to respond (mostly my own thinking, not directly from discussions). Finally, this annex could stay or be dropped

– I removed some of the tactical items or expanded them into more appropriate broad techniques

– I added one new complexity consideration with respect to the importance of Top Cover

– I specifically tried to address scheduling under planning

– I capitalized on a number of ideas raised and language used (including Andrew’s approach to attribution with respect to our polarity work

– A detail but very tiresome as we further amend (though I am running out of steam here), I have had to resort to manual pagination with my ancient WORD version to address the addition of annexes

I do hope you can read through the paper (or at least scan it). And with luck I will see you on-line at the meeting next week – Ian

• This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by Ian Mack. Reason: I think my note turned into gibberish - digital dinosaur

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[Ian Mack]

#15591

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Thanks again Davin for your perseverance in transcribing another meeting discussion – data mining now.

Miss Smith – You raise a good analogy for point number 12. In the 7 or so complex defence projects in my portfolio over a decade in the same job, I was always keen on understanding that the customer had identified their minimal viable solution because we could have to ‘back into’ it. I admit we avoided ‘satisficing’ in most cases. In the paper Davin referenced by Phil Crosby, Phil suggests that resilience includes ‘project realism’. His focus was on project launch and avoiding the ‘conspiracy of optimism’ but it is a resilience attribute that for me was applicable until the very last delivery of all artefacts or of services.  As Stephen has subsequently pointed out, it is about flexibility in so many (all?) development and execution activities. And because the project’s high level mandatory requirements become the purpose and typically the measurement of project or mission success, I belive one should consider ‘baking in’ such flexibility in requirements and broader benefits during the launch of the project. Finally – and I may have misinterpreted – I have seen little ‘elegance’ in pursuing complex projects, which of course was tempered by a single experiential domain (within government) which admittedly has biased my perspectives. That said, each of these ‘considerations can be amended to better reflect the thoughts of the Working Group so I will try to reshape it. Thanks for raising the point!     Ian

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