The Metis of Projects

A volume in I.S.C.E. Book Series Managing the ComplexSeries Editors Michael Lissack and Kurt A. Richardson, ISCE Research"The Metis of Projects" addresses veteran project manager Ben Berndt's unease with the use ofestablished (project) management frameworks given their general inefficacy. Despite the use ofthese frameworks, it is estimated that some 30% of projects still fail because they deliver too late,cost more than expected and/or lack quality. Often, projects and their environments are toocomplex to be controlled by rather linear frameworks. Where most practitioners define complexityas "complicated," most academics define complexity (more correctly) as interrelatedness. In recent years, the academic community hasdeveloped several "level-of-complexity frameworks;" however, these frameworks are not commonly known to practitioners and aretherefore not regularly used. And, when examined further, these frameworks appear to be merely environmental scans, used to assessthe level of complexity in the project management environment. But projects also carry inherent complexity; they are socially complex,and it is this social complexity that-paradoxically-needs management. Combined with personality assessments, social networktheory is used here to glean a better understanding of the social complexity in a project. Berndt believes that, following Hugo Leticheand Michael Lissack's emergent coherence concept, managers should steer clear of frameworks in order to come to grips with thecomplex, and so he introduces whole systems methodologies, in which group understanding is used to continually set a next step.Berndt concludes his study by describing his multi-view, multi-tool participative project management style, which he thinks best alignswith (managing) the complex.