Managing the Dynamics of Projects and Changes at Fluor

Project management is at once one of the most important and most poorly understood areas of management. Delays and cost overruns are the rule rather than the exception in construction, defense, power generation, aerospace, product development, software, and other areas. And no wonder: large projects are classic examples of dynamically complex systems. A large project involves significant accumulations, time delays, feedback processes, and nonlinearities, all features of dynamic systems that research shows are difficult for people to understand and manage. Further, decisions regarding scope, schedule, and budget are frequently made under severe schedule and cost pressure. Learning from past experience is difficult. The long duration of large projects means there are many changes in personnel, organization, management and market conditions between the handshake between client and contractor and the handoff of a finished facility, so it is difficult to attribute outcomes to decisions made months or years before. Project managers commonly believe every project is different, so often discount the applicability of past experience to current circumstance. Managers also tend to blame their people for what are usually process problems. And it is difficult or impossible to conduct controlled experiment