Reflection on “The Complexity Equation by Donovan Burba, November 2013”

Going through the article “The complexity equation”, it was interesting to know that it takes same skills to manage the complex projects, same skills to execute any project successfully; however, the project manager will have to deal with these skills at more mature level. It was also interesting to know that almost 75% of the projects nowadays are considered to be complex taking into consideration the global environment that is becoming increasingly part of our life, and that requires from the project managers to focus on the leadership and strategic management rather than technical project management in the talent triangle.

One of the biggest factors that cause the project complexity to increases is the “People” factor, and we mean by that the number of stakeholders in any project, both types; internal stakeholders such as the project team members, and external stakeholders like the final customer. The more people involved, the more opinions will be brought to the table, and that for sure will increase the project complexity, which brings us to the importance of having a solid communication plan/platform to manage that type of diversity. A strong communication platform will also play a big role accessing information, and that is crucial for complex projects.

All of the mentioned above is very important to achieve the success in the complex projects; however, personally I believe that without having the supportive organizational culture represented by the project sponsors and the firms top management, it will be almost impossible to have a successful project. The supportive culture is really important in any organization, not only on complex projects level, it is also crucial in change management and improving the internal performance and achieving a higher level of customer satisfaction.

Going through this article, it reminded me of a project that I worked on in 2011; it was King Abdul-Aziz international airport in Jeddah, kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

I was working with AIC as a team member in the design department in Amman-Jordan, and we were responsible for the main steel design, and we were a subcontractor for the main contractor which was a company from Holland, the consultant was Dar, a Lebanese company, on the top of that the construction department and the steel factory were between KSA and UAE.

What was very challenging in that complex project is that the main contractor did not have a communication plan for all parties involved, their main focus was the schedule and the cost, but they didn’t give attention to things like the communication, and that was reflected on the performance of the design department, and caused a lot of a work redo. Finally, my company started to focus on the communication tools and ways and ask about those at a very early phase of the projects that were assigned to us later.