Project Risk: Complex Project Management, Challenges and Solutions

This report delves into the realm of complex project management, highlighting its distinctions from complicated projects. It identifies key factors contributing to project complexity, including technical and business intricacies, organizational structures, human behavior, and ambiguity. The report then contrasts the traditional waterfall project management model with agile methodologies, emphasizing the limitations of the former in handling complex projects due to its linear approach and inflexibility to change. It provides a comparative analysis, showcasing how agile methods offer a more adaptable and effective approach to managing the inherent uncertainties and dynamic requirements of complex projects, ultimately leading to a more successful project outcome. The report also includes an example of a complex project, the merger of American Airlines and US Airways, showcasing the application of advanced project management techniques and leadership skills.

Running head: Project risk
Project complexity and risks
Name of Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Executive summary
Project management is one important aspect for ensuring the success and customer
satisfaction rate of any organization. Depending on the nature and objective of a particular
project, it identified as simple, complicated and complex. The complex projects are
predictable but time consuming and requires special attention for gathering success.
However, there exist numerous factors such as, organizational structure, culture, and human
behaviour, ambiguity along with the technical and business complexity that makes a
particular project complex. Therefore, the traditional project models that use the linear
approach are not efficient enough to manage these type of project. In such case, the agile
project management methods can be turn out to be fruitful. This report is going to emphasize
on the nature of the complex projects, with an explanation of how it varies from the
complicated projects. Additionally, why the traditional waterfall model for managing the
project is not effective in managing such project is going to be discussed here.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Project complexity.....................................................................................................................3
Technical complexity.............................................................................................................3
Business complexity...............................................................................................................4
Organizational structure.........................................................................................................4
Human behaviour...................................................................................................................4
Ambiguity..............................................................................................................................4
Complex project vs. complicated project...................................................................................5
Example of complex project..................................................................................................5
Failure of traditional project management model in complex project.......................................6
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
Reference....................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
The combination of different processes such as, initiating, planning, executing,
controlling as well as closing is identified as the stages of managing a particular project. The
main agenda of undertaking the project ,management activity inside an organization is to
satisfy the client’s objective by delivering expected outcome; thereby ensuring the
sustainability of the organization (Whitney and Daniels 2013). However, depending on the
organizational structure, nature of the project along with the technical factors, system
behaviour, business complexity and many other factors, the project might be complex or
simple. Therefore, the traditional project management models not always stand out as fruitful
for managing every type of project (Davies, Dodgson, and Gann 2016). This report is going
to emphasize on the brief description of a complex project and the difference between the
complex and complicated project. Additionally, the report will also discuss how the
traditional project management models are not efficient for managing the complex projects.
Project complexity
Managing the complex projects usually gathers the two important parts of managing
the project together; these are, using several advanced project management techniques and
the leadership or project management skills (Ackermann and Alexander 2016). These type of
projects comes with higher amount of uncertainty. There exist a number of factors that may
act as major contributor towards the project complexity. However, some of the important
factors are as follows;
Technical complexity
While managing the IT projects, facing the technical complexity is getting common
now a days. The major reason behind this is rapid innovation in the technologies and lack of
sufficient technical knowledge of the experts. However, as the IT industry is getting mature

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day-by-day, the technical complexity in managing the current age IT project is also
decreasing (Samigulina 2013).
Business complexity
Ensuring the success of a business in the current global marketplace needs agility as
well as the rapid and efficient modernization of the business models. Though, the business
change is important for its success; yet it is omnipresent and creates complexity in managing
the projects.
Organizational structure
The structure as well as culture of any organization acts as the star player in ensuring
its success and sustainability. While it comes to managing the project, it plays a vital role.
Depending on the nature and objective of the business, every organization has its own
structure. However, with the changing customer demand, sometime it becomes vital for the
organization to change their structure (Davies et al. 2017). This might cause trust issues and
affect the employee communication and hinder the organization’s functionality; thereby
creating complexity for the projects.
Human behaviour
In order to succeed in a project, the project manager along with the entire project team
and the stakeholders associated to the same need to be cooperative. However, factors like,
hidden agendas, ethical dilemmas, poor executive sponsorship, lack of proper
communication, step down of any of the stakeholders and many such factors can create major
complexity for the ongoing project and even lead to failure of the same.
Ambiguity
This factor explains dealing with the unclear situations that might arises due to the
confusing nature of the project or the unclear activity of the project team. Moreover, the

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emergent ambiguities can arise due to the unanticipated change occurs within the project.
Mainly it is the result of the changing organizational dynamics and interactions (Thamhain
2013). However, the whole concept of ambiguity is about how efficiently the project team is
managing the ongoing project.
Complex project vs. complicated project
Complex project and complicated projects are two different concepts. Though the
complicated projects are not simple; yet they are knowable. The complicated projects are
predictable however, completing those requires longer time period (Dao et al. 2016). On the
other hand, the complex projects might be predictable, but not entirely knowable.
Additionally, for the projects that are deemed to be the complex ones, can come up with
higher uncertainty and higher intricacy. However, in case of managing the complex projects,
there still exist a degree of subjectivity. The projects that are classified to be the complex
ones, are largely dependent on the influences and the external and internal organizational
environment and vary from organization to organization (Hornstein 2015). Moreover,
understanding whether a project is complex or complicated, largely depends on the context,
and influences that exist within the project context.
Example of complex project
One such example of the complex project is the merging of American Airline with the
US airways. The project managers as well as the IT experts associated with the project knew
that only spreadsheets are not sufficient for managing the resources of such a complex
project. Therefore, to get visibility as well as global priority, the project gathered portfolio
management, capacity planning and resource management (Peterman 2014). Despite of being

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one complex project, this particular project gathered success due to the management skills of
the project team and the IT experts.
Failure of traditional project management model in complex project
The traditional Project Management methods are generally explained by the waterfall
model. This is a linear approach where every phase of the project is carried out in a particular
sequence. Furthermore, the concept related to this depends on the predictable experience and
tools. Every project under this process, follows the same life cycle, comprising with number
stages which are, feasibility, planning, designing, building, testing, production and support.
However, while managing the complex projects, depending on the nature or type of the
project, every stage of the traditional model might not suitable. In such case, the traditional
model fails to deliver expected project outcome, mainly due to the following reason;
 Under this project management model, the whole project is planned upfront having no
scope for any changes in the requirements. Moreover, it assumes that the cost and
time are variables and all the project requirements are fixed; which leads to major
timeline and budget issues in case of the complex project. .
 However, as it follows linear approach, the traditional project management approach
is best suit for the small or less complex projects. Therefore, any kind of sudden
change in the project or any emerging risks may block the project projects and the
only solution for this is to go back to the initial stage and start the project again
(Singhto and Denwattana 2016).
 Additionally, according to this, once a particular phase is completed, the same cannot
be reviewed again. So, in managing the complex or the complicated projects, the
process does not respond to any rapid change. In such case, going back to the initial
stage is the only option and this obviously a time consuming process.

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Nevertheless, there exist other project management methods such as the agile approach that
accelerate the complex project management. It brakes the entire project into several
segments; thereby minimizing or eliminating the project risks and responding to any kind of
sudden change in the project requirements. Moreover, by using a parallel mode of managing
the projects, it ensure an organized way to complete the project. It also facilitate the customer
engagement in the project progress, which in other hand simplify the project management
activity (Špundak 2014).
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion, it can be analysed that, managing the complex
project requires the combine effort of the technological skills as well as the project
management abilities. However, the technical and business complexity along with the
organizational structure and other factors are responsible for converting a project into a
complicated one. Though the complicated and complex projects are confused to be same; yet,
they are different. Moreover, due to the linear approach and no response to the requirement
changes, the traditional project management approaches failed to manage the complex
projects, in such cases an agile approach might be comparatively efficient. This report has
given a brief idea regarding the complex project with an example of the same. Additionally,
the reasons for which the traditional project model fails to manage the complex projects have
also discussed here.

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Reference
Ackermann, F. and Alexander, J., 2016. Researching complex projects: Using causal
mapping to take a systems perspective. International Journal of Project Management, 34(6),
pp.891-901.
Dao, B., Kermanshachi, S., Shane, J., Anderson, S. and Hare, E., 2016. Identifying and
measuring project complexity. Procedia Engineering, 145, pp.476-482.
Davies, A., Dodgson, M. and Gann, D., 2016. Dynamic capabilities in complex projects: The
case of London Heathrow Terminal 5. Project Management Journal, 47(2), pp.26-46.
Davies, A., Dodgson, M., Gann, D. and MacAulay, S., 2017. Five rules for managing large,
complex projects. MIT Sloan Management Review, 59(1), p.73.
Hornstein, H.A., 2015. The integration of project management and organizational change
management is now a necessity. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2),
pp.291-298.
Peterman, C.A., 2014. The future of airline mergers after the US Airways and American
Airlines merger. J. Air L. & Com., 79, p.781.
Samigulina, G., 2013. Realization of the complex projects on the basis of the artificial
immune systems approach: intellectual system of risks estimation. American Journal of
Economics and control systems Management, 1(1), pp.3-5.
Singhto, W. and Denwattana, N., 2016, July. An experience in blending the traditional and
Agile methodologies to assist in a small software development project. In 2016 13th
International Joint Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering (JCSSE) (pp.
1-5). IEEE.

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Špundak, M., 2014. Mixed agile/traditional project management methodology–reality or
illusion?. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 119, pp.939-948.
Thamhain, H., 2013. Managing risks in complex projects. Project management journal,
44(2), pp.20-35.
Whitney, K.M. and Daniels, C.B., 2013. The root cause of failure in complex IT projects:
complexity itself. Procedia Computer Science, 20, pp.325-330.