n chapter 4 of Terry Cooke-Davies' book Aspects of Complexity Christopher Loch and Frederick C. Payne catalogue what project management might be able to do about complexity (Cooke-Davies 2011, p...

n chapter 4 of Terry Cooke-Davies' bookAspects of ComplexityChristopher Loch and Frederick C. Payne catalogue what project management might be able to do about complexity (Cooke-Davies 2011, p.43-49). The "Can Do" items they list are: -

1. Reduce Complexity: Decouple and Modularize (p.43)


2. Freeze Components (p.43)


3. Control-and-Fast-Response (p.44)


4. Small Steps and Controlling Variability (p.46)


5. The Role of Strategy (p.46)

Please select one of the "Can Do" items from the list of six above and discuss how some of the features of the item that Loch and Payne describe could have been used in the BP Deepwater Horizon case study in PPMP20012?

In not more than 1,000 words make your explanation by typing rich text directly into the editor field for your submission.

*** the case study is about deep water horizon *** and I have no access to this case study

Project Management Institute Aspects of complexity: mAnAging projects in A complex World Editor in Chief Terry Cooke-Davies, PhD Contributing Editors Lynn Crawford, DBA, John R. Patton, PMP, Chris Stevens, PhD, and Terry M. Williams, PhD Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Aspects of complexity : managing projects in a complex world / editor in chief, Terry Cooke-Davies ; contributing editors, Lynn Crawford ... [et al.]. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-935589-30-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Project management. I. Cooke-Davies, Terry, 1941- II. Crawford, Lynn. HD69.P75A77 2011 658.4’04—dc23 2011024450 Published by: Project Management Institute, Inc. 14 Campus Boulevard Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073-3299 USA Phone: 1610-356-4600 Fax: 1610-356-4647 Email: [email protected] Internet: www.PMI.org ©2011 Project Management Institute, Inc. All rights reserved. “PMI”, the PMI logo, “PMP”, the PMP logo, “PMBOK”, “PgMP”, “Project Management Journal”, “PM Network”, and the PMI Today logo are registered marks of Project Management Institute, Inc. The Quarter Globe Design is a trademark of the Project Management Institute, Inc. For a comprehensive list of PMI marks, contact the PMI Legal Department. PMI Publications welcomes corrections and comments on its books. Please feel free to send comments on typographical, formatting, or other errors. Simply make a copy of the relevant page of the book, mark the error, and send it to: Book Editor, PMI Publications, 14 Campus Boulevard, Newtown Square, PA 19073-3299 USA. To inquire about discounts for resale or educational purposes, please contact the PMI Book Service Center. PMI Book Service Center P.O. Box 932683, Atlanta, GA 31193-2683 USA Phone: 1-866-276-4764 (within the U.S. or Canada) or 11-770-280-4129 (globally) Fax: 11-770-280-4113 Email: [email protected] Printed in the United States of America. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, manual, photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher. The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48—1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 iii Table of Contents Acknowledgments.................................................................................................. v Introduction:ManagingProjectsinaComplexWorld.......................................vii Chris Stevens, John Patton, and Terry Cooke-Davies Chapter1:ComplexityinProjectManagementandtheManagementof ComplexProjects................................................................................. 1 Terry Cooke-Davies Part1–WithPractitionersandTheirManagersinMind................ 15 Chapter2:ManagingProjectsWithHighComplexity....................................... 17 Stephen Hayes and Daniel Bennett Chapter3:ToolsforComplexProjects............................................................... 29 Kaye Remington and Julien Pollack Chapter4:StrategicManagement:DevelopingPoliciesandStrategies............ 41 Christoph Loch and Frederick C. Payne Chapter5:FearofFlying...................................................................................... 57 Stephen Carver and Harvey Maylor Chapter6:TheImpactofComplexityonProjectCost andScheduleEstimates..................................................................... 73 Dale Shermon Chapter7:BeyondCompetence:DevelopingManagersof ComplexProjects............................................................................... 87 Lynn Crawford and Ed Hoffman Part2–WithResearchersandStudentsinMind............................. 99 Chapter8:HumanBehaviorandComplexity................................................... 101 Terry Cooke-Davies Chapter9:ControllingChaos?TheValueandtheChallengesofApplying ComplexityTheorytoProjectManagement................................. 115 Kaye Remington and Roxanne Zolin Chapter10:SystemsThinkingandtheSystemsMovement........................... 135 Peter Checkland and Terry Williams Chapter11:SystemsEngineeringandProjectManagement............................ 149 Andrew Daw iv Aspects of complexity: mAnAging projects in A complex World Summary.......................................................................................... 169 Chapter12:TowardaCoherentResearchAgenda........................................... 171 Terry Williams Chapter13:TowardProjectManagement2.0................................................... 179 Terry Cooke-Davies Contributors........................................................................................................ 189 v Acknowledgments This book owes a great deal to many people. The presenters at each of the Research Open Working Sessions, who so gener- ously provided their experience and insights, and the participants who made the conversations so lively. The contributors who have provided such stimulating chap- ters. The contributing editors, whose wise advice and ready support helped to give the book both shape and substance. And finally, of course Project Management Institute for funding this project and its many staff who have made this publication possible. My grateful thanks to you all. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to work with you on this project. vii Introduction Managing Projects in a Complex World Chris Stevens, John Patton, and Terry Cooke-Davies �And�when�it�comes�to�solutions,�simple�is�better.�Elegant�is�better�still.�� Elegance�is�the�simplicity�found�on�the�far�side�of�complexity.� Matthew May, 2007, p. 3 This book has been written with three different audiences in mind: people who manage programs and projects (practitioners), line managers in organizations to which programs and projects make a substantial contribution (managers), and members of the academic research community who have an interest in how com- plexity shapes and influences the practice of program and project management (re- searchers). Chapter 1 will be of interest to all three audiences, because it summarizes a se- ries of dialogues between practitioners, managers, and researchers. These dialogues provided this book with its shape and led to the choice of topics in the remaining chapters of the book. Increasingly in the world of business today, practitioners and managers find themselves potentially overwhelmed by the amount of complexity that they en- counter. Successful project and program managers in these situations have had a natural or learned proactive perspective of what needs to be done. For many, obtain- ing this valuable skill of thinking and acting holistically can be accelerated, but not substituted, by exogenous learning.