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Edoardo Favari Project Management Leading Change in the Age of Complexity Project Management Edoardo Favari Project Management Leading Change in the Age of Complexity Edoardo Favari DIG Politecnico di Milano Milan, Italy ISBN 978-3-031-25030-9 ISBN 978-3-031-25031-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25031-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Dedicated to Ettore and Elisa, my most beautiful project Foreword Edoardo Favari and I have something in common. We share the passion for projects and appreciate the change they bring to individuals, organisations and society. To successfully manage projects, managers and their teams need literacy in methods and processes. But in today’s projects, they are asked to go beyond. They need to create a holistic understanding of the project in its context, lead individuals, teams and stakeholders and their expectations to achieve or even co-create the purpose desired. This book has it all. It is experience based as well as theoretical grounded; it is informative as well as passionate; it is comprehensive as well as easy to read. This book offers students and future project managers the essentials to manage and lead projects successfully. Established project managers will especially like the myths provided to reflect and advance their project management knowledge. This book invites you to manage projects holistically to create purpose. Share with us the passion for projects! Prof. Dr. Martina Huemann WU Vienna University of Economics and Business Vienna, Austria vii Preface Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play [Immanuel Kant] Genesis and Methodology Writing this book was, like most things we do every day, a project. At the beginning, the plan was to put together a booklet for my students, because just providing them with presentation slides shown during classes was not enough from my perspective. It seemed to me a pretty easy task at that time. When the pamphlet was almost ready, the Project Management Institute announced the willing- ness to review the PMBOK—the international standard for project management—in a revolutionary manner, so I stopped the publishing of the pamphlet and joined the review team of the PMBOK 7th edition. That opportunity allowed me to deepen various perspectives, and it was the catalyst to read many books and papers about topics not exactly in the mainstream of project management. In the meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic started, and I personally experienced a change in managing projects due to the large use of virtual presence and remote cooperation tools, and the permanent need for change, resilience and sustainability that, in this new Millen- nium, all organizations face; project management have a pivotal role in allowing organizations to continuously adapt to a changing business environment. At the end of that journey, I reviewed the manuscript to overcome the division between waterfall and agile practice and integrating more hybrid approaches. In addition, I widened the space given to personal and interpersonal soft skills. And, for the second time, I felt the book was ready for publishing. One day, a former student of mine who was following a master’s degree in a well-known university, contacted me for clarification on a formula that his project management professor showed during classes. It was a formula for parametric esti- mation of the cost of an investment using a fractional exponent. In principle the ix x Preface formula was correct, but I asked the student to try to figure out what the director of a company’s department might say if he suggested to him or her to apply a formula with a fractional exponent. A fractional exponent! This led me to realize the need to write a project management book to fill the gap between theory and daily practice, in the language spoken in companies, and talking about everyday problems, often mundane but critical to project success, that are encountered in companies. I don’t like books written just for students—may be very complex and theoretical—and books written only for professionals in a simple- stupid way. I tried to find a balance between the needs of both groups because project management is the same thing if you are a student and a professional. So, I started adding concrete examples of “Myths” and “Bad Ideas”, discussing daily problems occurring during real project management, often humble but dramati- cally affecting the project’s performance. Many renowned books on project management discuss the troubled examples of astonishing and extraordinary projects (Manhattan Project, Apollo Program, COVID-19 Vaccine development, etc.) that make us dream, but that are not comparable to what ordinary project managers face daily. A useful book on project management must help ordinary project managers to deal with their ordinary projects, and prepare students to deal with the kind of projects that they will be asked to manage in reality. And this is, in the end, what I tried to do with this book. It is not trivial to balance the need for a pragmatic and ordinary language, and the discussion of the matter—sometimes ironic—with the maintenance of the high theoretical standard and comprehensive dissertation requested for an academic level textbook. So, remembering the precept of Immanuel Kant above, I talked about my book with colleagues and friends in the field—professional project managers, executives and academics. The final result is, according to me, the best possible trade off. Obviously, this book represents my personal perspective on what project management is, and what the best practice is to survive when navigating in troubled waters of (complex) projects: there is a lot of content based on my 20 years experience in managing large international projects in infrastructure, industrial and IT sectors, and also a lot from the debate I constantly have with students and executives when teaching at university and business schools. Any feedback would be most welcome and appreciated. Happy reading! This Book Is Peculiar The perspective of this book is peculiar compared to most of the project management books and challenging for any type of reader. It is the result of my personal experience in being in parallel a professional project manager, managing large international complex projects for 20 years, and a project management lecturer and researcher teaching international students and practitioners. It is not a research book: you will Preface xi find several quotations and references to other books and papers, but the content and its organization are mainly based on my personal experience and elaboration. In fact, during my working life, I had the opportunity to manage large infrastructure projects (railways, highways, metros) in many countries across Europe, Asia and Northern Africa. Moreover, I managed industrial projects such as new plants development and existing plants revamping with complex global supply chains, Research and Development projects of a large variety of new products and services involving team members and stakeholders from many countries worldwide, or organizational projects such as PMO implementation in a wide range of business areas including non-profit and social foundations. Moreover, just after getting my M.Sc. and before the Ph.D., I started teaching both at the academic and professional levels—I feel this is a crucial piece in the creation of my perspective about project management: I held classes in many countries all over Europe, and I am teaching every semester to students from all over the world, from bachelor to master, from post-graduate to executives, and the debate during lectures is enriching as much me as the students because I put myself as a servant leader assuming that, if anything is unclear, is very likely my fault. Today, I like challenging myself by managing the most complex projects or programs I can find. These are the ones where, inevitably, every single concept included in this book becomes of critical importance for the project development and any difference between what is stated “in theory” and what is done “in practice” represents a high risk against the project success. The Rise of the Project Economy, or Why This Book Is Relevant for You—Whoever You Are The twentieth century was the era of Efficiency and Operations Management, focused on “Running the Company” with the highest productivity. The twenty-first century is and will be the age of Change and Project Management: the temporary part will be operations occurring from one project to another. In fact, Project Management is about change: changing your and your customers’ organization through projects development and their outcomes. Since the beginning of this Century, we have had 2 major global financial and economic crises, the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Ukraine war. Moreover, the envi- ronmental situation seems to be continually deteriorating as well as political unsteadi- ness. Do you think there will be an end to instability? I don’t. It seems we are now at the core of the “age of complexity”. This “new normal” affects both our working and personal lives. Companies can no longer entrust maintaining a stable business with minor adjustments time after time: markets continuously ask for new products with new features, supply chains continuously face disruption and need to be redefined, and new norms and regulations need to update your products and production methods. Similarly, in our personal xii Preface lives, we must be prepared to change our company and our job title many times in our lives—a “job for life” in the same organization all lifelong has become a bedtime story—and this requires all of us to change our behavior and constantly update our skills and perspective. To change anything you need to manage projects. And this book is about project management. As my friend Paula said “Project Manager is a short job title for a huge role” and, unfortunately, today we have no choice other than being project managers, even if we don’t officially have that job title in our working and personal environment. So, you had better learn and apply all the teachings in this book, and more. Welcome to the Projectized world! How to Read This Book This book has essentially been divided into three parts. The first part is Chap. 1, in which I have provided principles and background concepts that are needed for any project manager to be effective and wise in what he or she does. It is the most theoretical part of the book, and its sections can sometimes seem to be disconnected: the reader must trust in me while reading, as the big picture will become clearer in further reading. Chapters 2–4 in the second part of the book represent the project management continuum: in this part, I have included all the processes, practices, methods, tools and practical examples needed by a project manager in his/her everyday work. Chapter 5 comprises a substantial amount of material not directly belonging to the Project Management domain, but relevant for project managers managing projects in modern organizations. From my perspective, a project manager, able to master all the content of this book, is ready to survive in managing projects in this age of complexity. Acknowledgements I want to thank those who supported me in writing this book. First of all, my Italian publisher, Società Editrice Esculapio, waived the rights on the English. Then, the colleagues who provided me with valuable comments, feedback and suggestions for the manuscript development (in alphabetic order): Barbara Barabaschi, Franca Cantoni, Andrew Davies, Francesco Timpano, Mauro Mancini, Nuno Gil, Kathrin Köster, Donald Lessard, Markku Lindell, Costanza Mariani,