You know: a project is just a bunch of people working together to achieve a certain goal. It is the result of many different interactions. Interactions between individuals, but also between project and employees, project and company, company and market. Yeah, we don’t use the term “complexity” for nothing.
It isn’t easy to make sense of all the interactions between the different levels, but it is something we need to do. As I discussed earlier this year, Panarchy (resilience theory) is a great tool to help us think about this. The father of resilience theory, Buzz Holling, received the 2008 Volvo Environment Prize. Volvo has created a short film (included below, or visit this link to view) that introduces Buzz and his concepts (hat tip Garry Peterson).
I explored the use of Panarchy in Project Management a few months ago (and will continue to do so in the next months):
The interactions between the different scales across a panarchy are important in respect to resilience. In terms of Panarchy, three elements are considered: the focal system (in our case “the project”), the higher scales (e.g. the company, or professional group, or society) and the lower scales (e.g. individuals or teams). “The resilience characteristics of any focal system are in large part determined by the interactions of scales across this panarchy, from the focal system to coarser scales and from the focal system to the finer scales.”
Understanding resilience within human systems is part of the “Second Turn” of The Four Dharmas Of Project Management. In this Second Turn you focus on the interaction of people.
Very interesting – esp the video on Buzz Holling.
Where I get to fairly quickly though is: OK – what concrete steps can you take in your project today?
The follow the sun idea is a good one but not applicable everywhere.
Variety is one aspect. Eg your ability as PM to cope with different kinds of people on yr team and the create an environment where they surface the issues (and solve them) in ways that are effective for them. Variety also guards against groupthink/incestuous amplification
Hi Andrew, fair question … resilience is an idea. Panarchy is a generic model, so the concept itself doesn’t provide concrete steps. For me personally the attractiveness lies within the fact that it covers a wide angle view and is relatively simple. It tells you to not only look at the project, but also to the organization and the individual, it tells you that breakdown is almost inevitable, but the system can restore itself.
It explains effects of the culture of the organization on a project, it explains that it is ok to have individual employees let go of steam (but avoid having the whole team in stress). It explains the need for a breakdown (sometimes). Samples at the end of this post:
http://blog.softwareprojects.org/panarchy-analyzing-complexity-projects-312.html
Try to avoid having scarce resources. Overcapacity provides better resilience.
“On demand” services like Platform As A Service provide resilience as they shorten lead times and eliminate it as a scarce resource. Concepts like virtual testing provide the same idea
http://blog.softwareprojects.org/virtual-testing-413.html
I think you get the point. It opens up a (potential new) way of looking at things.
But I guess it will take another year or so to find the right words
Thanks for a great post, it was nice to read through and watch the video.
It is a brainwashing post by you and I got to learn a lot.
I am starter in the project mgmt. arena and have a couple of projects in my bag but everyday has brought new knowledge and specially with professional people like you sharing stuff..