In order to understand why projects fail it is key to understand that increasing complexity makes project success more unlikely and that there are different types of complexity. Our research highlights two main types of complexity and eight key drivers.
| Type of Complexity |
Project Characteristic |
| External Complexity |
Level of pressure from management to achieve concrete and challenging results |
| Openess of goals to interpretation and level of political elements in goal definition |
| Level of expected uncomfortableness to project participants resulting from project results |
| Required level of communication to various stakeholders for getting the necessary buy-in for conclusions |
| Internal Complexity |
Distance of project to day-to-day business |
| Organizational distance of project participants |
| Level of fairly sophisticated data collection and analysis required for project |
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Level of "out of the box" thinking required for developing optimal conclusion
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Based on the level of internal and external complexity drivers, projects can be positioned in a project complexity matrix.
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Political Projects
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Complex Political Projects
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- Projects which do not have complicated analytics nor require complex project teams
- Complexity lies in political sensitivity of the overall issues the project has been asked to solve, and the process required for getting broad acceptance for conclusions
- An example of a political project is a cost reduction project within one department
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- These are projects that are complex to carry out on a stand-alone basis (due to challenging data collection and analysis), but which also have a complex political environment leading to unclear goals and a complicated communication process
- An example of such a project is an end-to-end transformation of a complex process crossing different organizational units
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Standard Projects
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Complex Projects
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- Projects carried out within the context of an existing organization consisting of people who are used to working together
- Project goals are clear and communication needs are limited
- An example of a standard project is a project related to delivering a standard product or service
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- Complex projects are difficult to execute due to “intellectual” challenges related to data collection, analytics, and developing the most appropriate conclusions
- The external environment of the project is fairly straight-forward as regards goals and acceptance of the results
- An example of a complex project is a project developing a complicated technical one-off solution to a given problem
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