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

[Tony Graham]

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I am happy to review ‘complexity mapping’ although I have not studied it to any depth.

The art of leadership is simplifying complexity. I often used the ‘swopping pieces/pawns’ analogy on a Chess Board until the strategic essentials emerge. I view mapping itself as less important than being able to ‘see’ through the clutter of complex mapping or complex real life to find the key driving issues that can be influenced to make the whole work better. The main challenges for mapping should become evident when trying to dealing with mapping perception issues (the mappers not seeing all the factors or the true complexity) and in dealing with unknown events.

It is clearly a useful tool and I’m sure I will learn a lot from others on the topic.

On timings – like Ian Mack (Can) – my ability to join in will depend the (UK) hours.

I now have wifi in the new house – so that makes life a lot easier

kind regards

Tony Graham

[Ian Mack]

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Hi Davin – I am prepared to listen and learn more about ways to make complexity mapping useful, without practitioners having to dedicate a team to it for months-to-years on end (given the dynamics at play in complex projects) – or methods to us machine tools to ease the human capital burden significantly. The other area I am wondering is whether we might generate a long list of the things we have collectively seen go wrong in complex projects, as a sort of “forest of complexity-driven risks and dependencies”, from which project staff members could pick and choose as they execute projects? (And I saw a “Stephen Grey” in one of the articles I pulled off the Internet on complexity mapping – you Stephen?) Also of importance will be what our product would be – another paper, or maybe a webinar instead, or just feeding notes into some other group focused on complexity mapping – our thoughts and our review of that group’s work?

As for Naomi’s suggestion, a would like to be flexible, but would prefer that we not go too much later in my evenings – the tyranny of distance. But if the group wants to go midday, I am happy to bow out and read on-line of the Working Group’s posted thoughts. I am sure there are other much smarter people out there who might want to gather at another time that fits Australians better – although the end of the working day might also work for me, depending. As I will have  little to offer on complexity mapping for practitioners, I should have no vote in that regard.       Ian

 

[Stephen Grey]

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Davin

I am interested in providing feedback on complexity mapping when the time arises

Thanks

Steve

[Davin Shellshear]

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Hi Group B

ICCPM are undertaking work on complexity mapping and are keen to get feedback from our group on their work when it is ready to share. I don’t have a date for that yet.

Are you willing to apply your expertise and experience in helping with this document?

Naomi has also suggested:

Thank you for the update on the SIG. I hope rather than taking a break, I can suggest having less frequent meetings for a while. The minimum we set is four meetings per year…and you dertainly exceed that! This might also be an opportunity to have a couple of meetings at different times to maybe engage some of the ICCPM Members who have expressed interest in joining the SIG. They may have some new ideas for areas of investigation. Even if the conversation doesn’t lead to a report, I’m sure members would value some free flowing conversations

Is this of interest to you?

Cheers

Davin

[Andrew Pyke]

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Thanks Davin, Ian and colleagues, for the productive few years.  Hopefully we have helped some PMs.  It was wonderful to learn from each other, throughout.  “au revoir”, I suspect, rather than “goodbye”.  :-)

[Ian Mack]

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Thanks Davin for your amazing dedication to so many meeting transcripts (and this one too that I will review), and for your insightful but subtle group leadership. And thank you to all who have participated to date for enriching my learning. Until next time, be curious!   Ian

[Davin Shellshear]

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Hi Group

Attached is the transcript from our meeting on 21st March 24.

There is so much good material in this meeting – I recommend it as worthwhile reading to all.

This is our final meeting for the moment, we have decided to take a break until one of our members comes up with a topic that inspires all to meet together and continue our good work. The group has produced 4 major papers over the last couple of years, and it it a real credit to those who have participated and contributed to our work.

I have learnt much from the meetings and am grateful for the hard work, the open sharing and good intent of all those involved. Thank you to all.

Until we fire up again, cheers and thank you to ICCPM and all those who have contributed to this very successful enterprise.

Please feel free to continue to use the forum to share ideas, maintain contact and work together for the good of all.

Cheers

Davin Shellshear

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[Davin Shellshear]

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Hi Group B

You probably know about the CHAOS report, but just in case:

The Standish Group has published the CHAOS (Comprehensive Human Appraisal for Originating Software) Report for nearly 40 years. In it, they have chronicled the failure of many IT projects to be delivered on time, within budget, and with all promised functionality (scope). According to “CHAOS 2020: Beyond Infinity,” only 19% of all IT projects achieve this lofty goal (on time, within budget, and with all scope). This just might be the worst statistic in the last 40 years of CHAOS Reports. Many projects will of course achieve a combination of some subset of these goals (e.g., timing and quality, but not scope and budget), but very few achieve all.

See

Portman, H. (2021, January 6). Review Standish Group – CHAOS 2020: Beyond Infinity. Henny Portman’s Blog. https://hennyportman.wordpress.com/2021/01/06/review-standish-group-chaos-2020-beyond-infinity/

[Ian Mack]

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Hi all – Firstly, thanks to those last meeting participants who suggested references, and to those which  Davin offered. I found some interesting and ideas new to me. Over the last 30 months, the WG has offered much additional learning aside from our 5 question-driven projects (accompanied by four papers) – such supplementary learning being a tremendous opportunity that might justify continuing as a WG.

Perhaps I am just wearing out, but I only saw four new project opportunities in our last meeting:

– sustainability (and how to manage it), which really dominated the discussion in the last meeting

– related to the last one or perhaps included in it, transparency/PR with societal and affected neighbourhood stakeholder groups

– principle-based execution of complex projects, rather-than-or-polarity-sensitive  perspectives-driven and considerations-based approaches that we have employed up to now

– based on the last article that Davin offered, the importance of incorporating ‘fun’ into project execution and how it might be done

I suspect I missed some great new ideas from our last discussion and welcome all to chime in – with ones I missed, and with new ones that we have not tackled up to now. With luck, I hope to see you all n a week or so – we just did a time change in Canada, and many of you know how good I am at time changes – NOT!.  Ian

 

 

[Davin Shellshear]

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Group B – time for a bit of fun?

Cheers

Davin

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[Davin Shellshear]

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Hi Group B

I thought you may find the attached papers to be of interest, particularly in terms of lessons learnt and setting success factors.

Happy reading

Davin

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[Davin Shellshear]

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Hi Group B

Attached is the transcript of our last meeting. Sorry for the delay – I have been very busy.

It is really good to hand over our paper on cross discipline issues to ICCPM – another product of our collective experience and wisdom.

The transcript has a number of suggestions for future topics, so happy reading and we will catch up at our next meeting.

Cheers

Davin

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[Sebastian Winter]

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Hello MRC SIG,

Through the ICCPM Research Support Program, we are supporting a study out of one of our Academic Partners, Western Sydney University. The study is titled ‘Developing a net-zero carbon project management competency maturity model for infrastructure projects in Australia‘, and the research team are conducting a survey which we would like to invite you to participate in.
The survey should take 6 to 7 minutes to complete.

You can find more information on the study, here:
https://iccpm.com/research/

And the link to the survey, here:
https://surveyswesternsydney.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9FQSAsSbcO8WIYK

[Sebastian Winter]

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Hello everyone,

Ahead of the meeting tomorrow, this is a reminder to check your emails for the latest MRC SIG reminder email from ICCPM as the link for the meeting will change each time in order for the SIG to be opened by the Co-Chairs instead of ICCPM staff.

I will be online and ready to send the link through in case anyone has any trouble.

Kindly,
Sebastian
Marketing and Communications Coordinator

[Ian Mack]

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Thanks Davin.

I would like to meet this superhuman person! I think that it is a useful primer for project team leaders to consider employing as a way to guide their teams when their people are running too hard and fast in any direction when faced with an emerging complex (and always seemingly urgent) problem.

I took another of the many ‘good leadership’ lists (enclosed file) , and one might see all of these attributes within the attachment. The one that might be missing is patience unless it is under calm & thoughtful. And as always, any of these could be a weakness depending on the context.

Perhaps the ‘well rounded’ project execution team leader will someday be supported by an AI-generated avatar akin to DATA in Star Trek (now I am dating myself for sure …) – Ian

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