August 05 2026 at 04:45AM
Pulse of the Profession®: Driving Success in Complex Projects
Our annual rubric Pulse of the Profession® reveals an amazing research on project complexity. It starts from a short but insightful foreword, in particular, how complex and complicated projects differ, and what high performers specifically do to succeed with the former. The foreword is followed by the key insights: source of the complexity, effects it manifests in, and rules to follow for success.
The further introduction shows alarming statistics: ⅓ of complex projects out of survey failed to achieve the intended benefits. Complexity is increasing, and hardly any project professional has recently avoided a project they may call complex. And it is not only technology to blame. So how do managers deal with complexity?
In a deep dive we get back to the difference between complex and complicated, and discover three dimensions of complexity: organisation, human, environment. Each dimension is explained in detail, accompanied by numbers and graphics.
Further there are eight drivers of the growing complexity presented, some of which assessed differently by CEOs and project professionals. The gap, however, lies in perspective rather than disagreement. The report continues by the drivers split across industries, where you find similarities and differences per business business domain.
The system thinking is supposed to help with complexity, but does everybody agree this is the remedy? Check this in the following chapter, and find a reference on another relevant PMI research.
Well, and what does a negative outcome look like? There are many of them highlighted, combined again in three categories - different from the categories we defined in sources, however. The complexity starts looking complicated…
Alright, so what are you gonna do in order to tame the beast of complexity? We share 5 practices, some of them may look very familiar to you, however, not quite trivial. Examples and explanations are added as well.
Finally, you read how risk and complexity are interdependent, a couple of personal stories on how project professionals manage complexity, and how PMO may help.
Hundreds of CEOs and project professionals kindly shared their views, challenges, stories, and numbers. Besides valuable statistics, the report contains pieces of personal advice. All the above we tried to combine and structure - so enjoy your reading!
