Note change of date. Also venue is the Atlassian Basement. 6pm drinks for a 6:30pm start.
Do you often encounter surprises on your projects that seem to make sense later on? If so, you may have a project environment that is not just complicated but complex.
It is clear that we live in an increasing complex and interconnected world in which millions of lines of code run our cars and social networking services support emergent political change in the middle-east. Complexity is the domain of unknown unknowns - the home of the sort of surprises familiar to any of us who work in software development.
The computer systems that we develop, the project environments we develop them in, and our organisations themselves are all becoming more complex, not less. It follows then that those organisations who acknowledge this and find ways to be effective at delivering projects in complex environments are likely to be more successful that their competitors who don't.
It turns out that the directive management style that we inherited from the industrial revolution around 200 years ago is not the most effective approach in such complex environments.
In this session we unpack the nature of complexity and explore the latest management science. We'll explore why the traditional project management approaches used in most organisations break down in the face of complexity and unpredictably and the approach we can use instead.
Luckily, there is an increasing understanding of management techniques with which we can control the unpredictable and determine what works when the nature of the project's variables are unknown.
We present a proven model for successful project management in a complex environment. In doing so, we uncover a number of fundamental paradigm shifts that underpin agile methods as well as the attributes and skills that this requires of managers and leaders who wish to be effective in the face of the 21st century's Wicked Problems of complexity and unpredictability.
As Heinz Pagels said: “I am convinced that the nations and people who master the new sciences of complexity will become the economic, cultural and political superpowers of the next century.”
Outline:
- "Wicked Problems"
- The applicability of various leadership and management approaches
- The difference between Complicated and Complex environments
- Simulation: Complex Adaptive Systems
- Management model for Complex domains
- Leadership skills for Complex domains
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