Increasing Project Flexibility: The Response Capacity of Complex Projects

“Expect the unexpected” is excellent advice for all project managers, and especially those involved in highly complex projects. While the importance of effectively handling unexpected events is often mentioned in project literature, formal study of the matter has been lacking. Increasing Project Flexibility: The Response Capacity of Complex Projects fills this void as a report of research conducted by Serghei Floricel, Sorin Piperca, and Marc Banik.

Project organizations generate a social structure that is unique to each organization. One of the essential properties of the structure is its ability to deal with unexpected events, or what the authors call its “response capacity.” To explore and better understand this element, the authors adopt a three-stage approach that includes theoretical development, qualitative investigation, and quantitative exploration. In the theoretical development stage, the study draws on fundamental social theories and prior project management research to propose three properties of the project structure that define its response capacity: cohesion, flexibility, and resourcefulness.

Theory meets practice in the qualitative investigation stage. The authors examine 17 field cases studies completed across a variety of business sectors. They use the studies to identify concrete activities and relations that correspond to the dimensions they developed theoretically.

In the quantitative exploration stage, the authors create a survey based on the concrete examples gathered in the qualitative stage to measure the concepts developed theoretically.

This study is an important addition to project literature and research. Its details provide value to academics and practitioners alike.