Tools for Complex Projects

Kaye Remington and Julien Pollack

Gower, 2007
ISBN 0566087413

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Tools for Complex Projects is informative and well written, and it blends theory and practical advice effectively, presenting a useful range of tools that engage the reader in contemplating technique and high level issues in programme and project management.

Fourteen project management tools are detailed in 14 chapters, each tool placed in context and with the written explanation supported by helpful illustrations or tables. Unfortunately the reader is diverted from learning the practical tools, as the first seven chapters form a lengthy introduction of 83 pages, dealing with four different types of complex project, a chapter on where complexity comes from, one providing a guide to the tools and another posing the question: What is a complex project? More then once, I was tempted to abandon the contextual information and cut to the later chapters.

We learn that projects can be structurally complex (many components), technically complex (uncertain outcomes), directionally complex (poorly defined objectives) and temporally complex (sensitive to external factors). I am not convinced of the need to elevate projects that are poorly conceived to their own category, and the three other types of project are more likely to be end members of a continuum in project space. To varying extent, all complex projects have uncertain outcomes and multiple component sub-projects, and are susceptible to change imposed by external forces, stakeholder action, for example.

And the tools? Chapter 8 presents a tool for mapping project complexity, where mapping means depicting the level of complexity on a 4 x 3 matrix, plotting type of complexity verses level of complexity. We move on through the chapters to an eclectic range that includes Jazz, Kototovich Triad, Stanislavski's Method and Discursive Universe.

Some tools have general application; others are appropriate for a single type of complexity.

General tools, such as system anatomy, programme tool and role definition, are of the type with which all practitioners should be aware and are likely to be discussed with higher mjanagement to give assurance that the programme will be well run and is accountable to the organisation. Tools with more specific application are appropriate to the downward management of projects, and some of them will be unfamiliar to experienced practitioners.

Tools for Complex Projects occupies a niche between general planning advice and practical tools for the implementation and management of projects. The analysis of compexity is thought provoking, but offers a classification where, perhaps, none is needed. At a retail price of £60 for 200 pages of wisdom, the book is unlikely to reach a wide audience.

Reviewed by Michael Earle MIRM, Group Exploration Manager, Aurelian Oil & Gas