- Publication
Navigating Complexity: A Practice Guide, Second Edition
A practical, research-based guide to help Project Professionals recognize, understand and navigate complexity in today’s project environments.
PMI Practice Guide
Overview
Projects today rarely unfold in a straight line. Interconnected systems, diverse stakeholders, volatile environments and layered governance make many initiatives more complex than traditional approaches were built to handle.
Navigating Complexity: A Practice Guide, Second Edition helps Project Professionals meet that challenge. It offers practical strategies, frameworks and tools to build the competencies needed to navigate complexity and achieve project success.
Created for project, program and portfolio professionals and leaders managing complex work, the guide moves beyond theory to address both the technical and human aspects of complexity. It helps professionals become not just problem-solvers, but sense makers and systems navigators.
The guide is a key knowledge resource for the PMI Advanced Project Leader (APL)™ certification, making it an essential reference for professionals pursuing the certification.
It includes:
- Foundations in systems thinking and complexity theory
- Guidance on tailoring development approaches for complex environments
- Competencies, communication, decision-making and leadership strategies for navigating complexity
- Practical tools, frameworks and case studies for real-world application
- Organizational enablers, including enterprise agility, organizational learning and adaptation
- Complexity playbooks to help teams put guidance into action
Product Specifications
Pages
256
Publisher
Project Management Institute
Publication Date
October 2026
What You'll Learn
1. Understand what makes a project complex
Explore the types and sources of project complexity and learn to recognize when a project or program has moved beyond the complicated into the complex.
2. Apply systems thinking to complex work
Use systems thinking and complexity theory to see interdependencies, anticipate emergent change and make sense of ambiguous situations.
3. Choose the right development approach
Understand how predictive, adaptive, and hybrid approaches can be tailored to the level and type of complexity you face.
4. Strengthen the human side of complexity
Build the competencies, communication practices and stakeholder engagement strategies that help teams stay aligned when conditions shift.
5. Make better decisions under uncertainty
Learn decision-making and leadership strategies for environments where information is incomplete, and outcomes are hard to predict.
6. Put tools and frameworks to work
Apply templates, heuristics, diagnostic tools and case studies designed for immediate use in real project environments.
7. Build organizational capacity for complexity
Explore how enterprise agility, organizational learning and complexity playbooks help organizations adapt and sustain success.
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