Why does project management not work in complex environments?

TL;DR; Traditional project management is not effective in complex environments because it relies on predictability and low variance, while complex projects involve many unknowns and frequent surprises. In these situations, traditional methods struggle to adapt and deliver results. Development managers should consider adopting Agile or Scrum approaches that are better suited to handling uncertainty and change.

Published on 23 May 2023

Written by Martin Hinshelwood

2 minute read

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Project Management in Intricate Environments

As Agile Consultants, we know that Project Management can falter in complex environments, so I wanted to spend a little time discussing why traditional Project Management might not be the best fit for complex environments.

Ready? Let’s dive in! 🚀

Recognising the Complexities

I’ve always mentioned in my articles that Project management was originally crafted to manage work we comprehend and was designed to plan work that we understand or work with low variance (say 10%-15% maximum variance in expected outcome to actual outcome). 🧩

But complexity, by definition, means more is unknown than known. And when it comes to complex environments, things can take a sharp turn.

So, in complex environments, at least 50% isn’t understood, leading to surprises creeping in as you’re building products. 👀

Where Project Management Stumbles

Having discussed the reasons why, it’s pretty clear that Project Management struggles in complex environments.

Why is this so?

The simple fact is that project Management doesn’t handle that level of variance well. And that’s why it doesn’t deliver as we might hope in these situations. ⚠️

The following types of Project Management show the different approaches that should be taken:

Traditional Project Management: Best for low variance, understood environments ✅
Complex Environments: More unknowns, needs a different approach ❌

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So project management was designed to plan work that we understand or that has low variance at least right let’s let’s call it 10 to 15 maximum variance in expected outcome to actual outcome.

But in complexity the definition of complexity is that more is unknown than none right so it’s at least more than 50 percent not understood you don’t know 50 of what’s going to happen those are the surprises that creep in as you’re building products.

So project management doesn’t work in complex environments because it doesn’t handle that level of variance.

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