Executive's Guide to Project Management: Organizational Processes and Practices for Supporting Complex Projects

The Nature of Project Complexity and Uncertainty

Kathleen B. Hass (Managing Complex Projects: A New Model, Vienna, VA: Management Concepts, 2009) offers the most in depth treatment of complexity that we have. She describes complexity in terms of:

• Time, cost, and size
• Team composition and performance
• Urgency and flexibility of cost, time, and scope
• Clarity of problem, opportunity, and solution
• Requirements volatility and risk
• Strategic importance, political implications, multiple stakeholders
• Level of organizational change
• Risks, dependencies, and external constraints
• Level of IT complexity

In a paper written shortly after her book was published (presented at the 2010 PMI Global Congress Proceedings, Washington, DC) she updates the complexity definition with a four-point scale (Independent Projects, Moderately Complex Projects, Highly Complex Projects, and Highly Complex Programs) and displays the values for a specific project in the form of a spider chart. Figure 1.1 is a hypothetical example adapted from her updated definition and published with her permission.

Figure 1.1 Project Complexity Spider Chart

Adapted from: Project Complexity Model 2.0, Kathleen B. Hass © 2010, Kathleen B. Hass & Associates, Inc.

The project illustrated in Figure 1.1 is highly complex as indicated by the project complexity score on Level of IT Complexity and Clarity of Problem, Opportunity, and Solution. ...