International Research Network on Organizing

Running head: MANAGEMENT OF COMPLEX PROJECTS
Management of Complex Projects
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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MANAGEMENT OF COMPLEX PROJECTS
Project for learning
‘The Australian Government’s response to Coronavirus (COVID 19)’
COVID 19, or the coronavirus has been shaking the world since middle of February
2020. The virus attacks the respiratory system of people and gives symptoms like common flu
with dry cough, fever, and difficulty in breathing. It is extremely contagious, as the virus spreads
through contacts and sneezes and coughs of the infected people. The most striking feature of this
virus is that it is spreading through many asymptomatic individuals. Even before realizing and
taking any measure, the virus attacked millions of people worldwide. On March 11, World
Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a pandemic. According to the record by
WHO, it has killed 50000 people across the world while number of affected cases has crossed 1
million (World Health Organization 2020). The attack started with Wuhan in China and within
15 days the world has gone into lockdown to prevent the spread of virus through contact. Hence,
almost all the governments have appealed people to stay indoors and maintain social distancing
to flatten the curve of the COVID 19 cases. Australia has not been infected as much as the other
first world countries in the northern hemisphere, although the sudden outbreak of coronavirus
has created emergency and unexpected situation all over the Australian economy. As of April 3,
2020, total corona-positive cases in Australia is 5,350, with 28 deaths and 585 recovered.
Number of currently infected patients is 4,737 (Worldometers.info 2020). The government of
Australia has taken quite a few measures to tackle the unexpected pandemic, among which
maintaining social distance is the primary one. The unexpected project require actions from all
the sectors, especially in the healthcare and the Australian government announced a fund of
$17.6 billion, which is almost 0.9% of the Australian GDP to keep the economy going. The
government imposed travel restrictions, usage of masks, self-isolation for the residents, along

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MANAGEMENT OF COMPLEX PROJECTS
with various financial supports for different health services in the hospitals (Health.gov.au 2020).
All of these can be termed as an emergency or unexpected project for the government of
Australia, which has a widespread impact on the health services, social and community lives,
employment, production level and all other related economic activities in the nation. This report
will present context of the development of the coronavirus response project of the Australian
government with its expected and real outcomes, and the main stakeholders by applying relevant
theories on managing and implementing complex project. The project will focus on the actions
taken by the Australian government and their approaches to combat the national issues related to
coronavirus outbreak.
Complex project management
Complex projects are those that contain variety of uncertainties with varying degree. In
other words, a project can be termed as complex where there are multiple uncertainties and
interdependencies are present involving several teams and stakeholders (Williams 2013).
Criticalities arise in terms of size, timeframe, interconnectedness and ambiguity level and once
complexities arise, traditional project management techniques cannot deliver the expected
outcomes. The coronavirus attack and the project to prevent further spread of the virus has taken
the shape of an extremely critical issue. It has unknown dependencies, and uncertainties, extreme
volatility, there are interconnectedness between different teams and stakeholders, technology,
cost and timeframe are crucial and majorly unavailable, and speed of transmission is extremely
high for COVID-19 and therefore, the project requires different treatment than the traditional
projects. Hence, to develop the project, the Cynefin framework and Diamond model can be
applied.

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MANAGEMENT OF COMPLEX PROJECTS
Cynefin framework can be called a leader’s framework used for decision making in a
complex project. It presents five contexts or domains for decision making, namely, Obvious or
Simple, Complicated, Chaotic and Complex and the last one Disorder. The leaders or managers
need to assess the first four situations and take appropriate decisions. When they cannot
determine which of the four contexts is dominant, then the situation of disorder (Snowden
and Boone 2007). This framework is useful for the managers in understanding the context of
the problem they are in and take better decisions, as each of the context requires different types
of actions and decisions on the basis of the cause and effect relationships and at the same time,
they can also estimate the situational outcome in case they make mistakes in decision making.
This framework is highly useful for evaluating project issues from new viewpoints, assimilating
complex concepts, and addressing the real world problems as well as opportunities (Dykstra and
Orr 2016). While the simple and complicated contexts are backed by complete information and a
precise cause and effect relationships, the complex and chaotic contexts are based on incomplete
information and ambiguous cause and effect relationships. When the dominance of any of these
situation is unclear, the context of disorder appears and the scenario are broken down into
smaller components and assigned to those four domains for making decisions.