Stand Back and Deliver: Accelerating Business Agility

Chapter 4. Delivery

The Big Ideas

• By understanding the uncertainty and complexity characteristics of your projects, you can identify better ways to lead those projects.

• High complexity or uncertainty correlates to higher risk. Reduce these factors, and you reduce your level of risk. Project decomposition can reduce complexity, while incremental delivery helps lead a project through uncertainty.

• Some leaders are natural managers of complexity, while others are experts at uncertainty. Match leadership styles to project characteristics, and develop leaders’ skills to broaden their capabilities.

Case Study: The Swiss Stock Exchange

The Swiss stock exchange was preparing to enter electronic trading. There had been two prior attempts to develop ...