One of the main reasons technology projects fail so often is their (underestimated) complexity.
Managing this complexity should be an urgent concern for any organisation doing large technology projects.
And before you can manage the complexity of your project, you need to understand what drives the complexity of your project.
That is why I created the Project Complexity Assessment.
This assessment will guide you through the 3 dimensions (structural, sociopolitical, and emergent) of project complexity by asking you 41 questions.
At the end of the assessment you will get a score between 0 and 38. The higher your score, the better you have a grip on the complexity of your project.
Most questions have detailed feedback with links to more insights on how to handle this part of project complexity.
In use, the benefits of this assessment arise not directly from the questionnaire but from the subsequent conversations between people involved in the project.
Your Project Sponsor, Project Manager, Steering Committee, and main Stakeholders need to sit together and go through the answers.
You need to discuss how to reduce the complexity as much as possible and how to manage the remaining complexity actively.
The Project Complexity Assessment is, in other words, a tool for transparency and sense making.
The assessment is based on research from Stephen Carver, Senior Lecturer at Cranfield School of Management.