Cybernetic Approach To Project Management

This book attempts to reflect the project reality as closely as possible, covering the ISO 21500:2012 standard that has just been introduced and the benefits from the best contributions worldwide and also providing the concise yet powerful tool box. It shall be easy to use and intuitively supportive of project managers. So far, evidence indicates that these targets are successfully met.​ One of its key recognitions, and in consequence a distinctive feature of this book, is the impact that the project manager‘s personality has on the fate of the project. The project manager's successful self-management in work & life and in leadership processes should be considered as important in any endeavor as all other project management processes, covered by the new standards and guidelines.

The Workshops on Autonomous Systems emanated from a gathering with the doctoral students of just three chairs at Fernuniversität in Hagen, which we organise twice per year for a number of years now. Their purpose is to discuss on-going research and to create a community spirit. Furthermore, they serve as a means of structuring the students' research processes. The workshop has grown and matured in several respects. The doctoral students presenting their work do not come from a single university anymore, but from three. Besides them and their supervisors, also other scientists became interested in the event and contribute to its programme. Following the model of Advanced Study Institutes, they are available on the premises for relaxed, informal discussions outside the formal sessions. Finally, with the co-sponsorship of Gesellschaft für Informatik, the German Computer Society, and this surprisingly comprehensive volume of contributions published by Springer-Verlag the workshop turned into a visible scientific event.

This volume contains all papers presented at the Eighth European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research. 169 draft papers were submitted for evaluation. In the process of careful refereeing, 33 papers were rejected and the remaining authors were invited to submit final papers. Out of these, 119 were accepted for presentation at the conference and publication in this volume. These papers were prepared by 173 scientists, authors and co-authors, from 22 European and non-European countries, with different cultural, social, and economic structures. Everybody tried hard to make this conference and its proceedings a true representation of state-of-the-art research worldwide: The members of the Programme Committee and the Chairmen of the Symposia were selected among the ~internationally leading scientists. Great care was taken not to make this conference a "European" or even "Austrian" one. We are happy and proud to hear that these "European Meetings" (the name is a purely traditional one) are recognized as the internationally leading conferences in cybernetics and systems research. Important scientists from allover the world carefully prepare their papers, containing their most recent research findings, and then enjoy the discussions with their co 11 eagues.

“The Metis of Projects” addresses veteran project manager Ben Berndt’s unease with the use of established (project) management frameworks given their general inefficacy. Despite the use of these frameworks, it is estimated that some 30% of projects still fail because they deliver too late, cost more than expected and/or lack quality. Often, projects and their environments are too complex to be controlled by rather linear frameworks. Where most practitioners define complexity as "complicated," most academics define complexity (more correctly) as interrelatedness. In recent years, the academic community has developed several "level-of-complexity frameworks;" however, these frameworks are not commonly known to practitioners and are therefore not regularly used. And, when examined further, these frameworks appear to be merely environmental scans, used to assess the level of complexity in the project management environment. But projects also carry inherent complexity; they are socially complex, and it is this social complexity that—paradoxically—needs management. Combined with personality assessments, social network theory is used here to glean a better understanding of the social complexity in a project. Berndt believes that, following Hugo Letiche and Michael Lissack's emergent coherence concept, managers should steer clear of frameworks in order to come to grips with the complex, and so he introduces whole systems methodologies, in which group understanding is used to continually set a next step. Berndt concludes his study by describing his multi-view, multi-tool participative project management style, which he thinks best aligns with (managing) the complex.

This research monograph presents an inter-disciplinary study of the impact, and current status, of applications of complexity-related concepts in the early stages of development of Agile Project Management (APM). The results serve as an introduction for exploring more profound relations between complexity-related ideas and APM in the future. The increasing complexity of software projects and their environment in the 1990s constituted the main determinants of the development of the family of methodological frameworks called Agile Project Management. Development of APM has been shaped by a broadly defined area of research called complexity science or complexity theory based on complex adaptive systems (CAS) and on their characteristics: Complexity, chaos, the edge of chaos, emerging properties, non-linearity, self-organization, etc. In the 21st century, due to the expansion of Agile beyond software development, the challenges deriving from the complexity of projects and the environment are even more urgent or compelling. Such phenomena demand more profound inter- and multi-disciplinary studies. This book examines the impact of applications of complexity-related ideas deriving from intuitive complexity and from complexity science in the early stages of development of the Agile methodological frameworks in project management and considers the current status of those applications. It questions the usefulness of those applications for the practice and theory of APM, and then proposes a conceptual framework for further theoretical studies and several ways of improvement and refinement of the Agile Project Management necessary to deal with broadly defined complexity in project management. Requiring a medium-level knowledge of complexity studies and knowledge of project management, this book is written for the research community studying the links between the various methodological frameworks included in APM and complexity-related ideas. It will also be interesting for studies of the impact of complexity on modern management, and for master’s students on IT and management courses.

The development of the Agile Movement, whatever the area ofapplication or discipline, comes from the famous “faster,cheaper, better" maxim. As such, the agile manufacturing paradigmrests on four principles: response to change and uncertainty,supplying highly customized products, synthesis of diversetechnologies, and intra-enterprise and inter-enterpriseintegration. For the reader interested in agile project management applications,response to changes, and transformations and its impact on managingprojects, this book is a must-read. Various insights are covered,including: how to master complexity and changes in projects, economy, andsociety; how interaction between the project management team and projectowners can influence risk management; how to move beyond the traditional mechanistic projectmanagement approach; how to include agile principles into an improved LogicalFramework Analysis structure; what the impact is of agile principles on projectmanagement organizations what kind of innovative project management practice supportsagile principles; and much more.