A deterministic system is a system that will produce the same results if you start with the same conditions. The outcome can be reliably predicted if you know the starting conditions. For example, if you fire a rifle several times at a target, the hits on the target will be closely grouped if all the initial conditions are almost identical. A nonlinear, or chaotic, system can produce wildly different results even if the starting conditions are almost exactly the same. If today’s weather pattern is almost exactly the same as it was on a previous date, the weather a week later could be entirely different. Projects are usually nonlinear systems. If we execute an identical complex project three different times, we would deliver three different outcomes. We start with the assumption that the project is deterministic and use scenarios and simulations to develop the most likely outcome, yet a small change such as the timing of someone’s vacation or a small change in the delivery date of equipment can change the entire trajectory of a project.
Drug Manufacturing Facility
A pharmaceutical company in California developed a drug that improved the quality of life for people with arthritis and in some cases prevented serious debilitations and even death. The drug was in the final FDA testing stage, and the company decided to accept the risk and proceed with designing and building a facility to manufacture the drug. The company had done this type of project before, and some managers felt that the outcome would be fairly predictable. The company assigned the lead scientist as the project manager to get the project started. Two weeks into the project start-up, the company president realized the project needed a project manager with more engineering and construction expertise and hired a new person to manage the project. Then the company decided to build the facility on land the company owned in Colorado, and the project team began designing a facility that would fit the existing site. Thirty days into the design phase, the company found an existing facility that could be retrofitted to meet the production needs of the new drug. During the first week of construction, the drug failed an FDA test and the project was placed on hold. This project environment was highly volatile, and the project plan and organization adjusted and evolved to respond to each of these changes.
Not all projects experience this degree of environmental turbulence, yet all projects experience some forms of environment shift during the life of the project. This is one of the reasons project managers develop an aggressive change management process. The purpose of the change management process is not to stop change but to incorporate the change into the project planning and execution processes. Projects, like all other complex adaptive systems, must respond to the evolving environment to succeed. Plan as if the project is deterministic but be prepared for unpredictable changes.
In addition to responding to changes in the project environment, the internal project organization and environment is in a constant state of change. New people become members of the team, people quit, retire, and get sick. The office roof starts leaking, headquarters rolls out a new computer program required for all workers, or the project’s lead engineer cannot get her immigration visa extended. These are real examples of events that occurred on one project, and the project team adjusted to each event. The adaptation to changes in the project’s internal situation while also adapting to the external environment reflects the coevolving nature of a complex adaptive system. An increase in the number of events within the project and the project environment that are likely to change during the life of the project is reflected in an increase in the complexity of a project.
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