Knowledge Matters™

Why am I blogging on Christmas Day? Well a bit like David Snowden I find blogging addictive, and a useful way to record my thoughts and ideas as they occur. And if that’s not enough it provides a means for an offsite backup for some elements of my doctorate. I am really enjoying my doctorate at the moment, so I thought I would share some of the work I did yesterday.

I’ve called this blog Deconstructing Complexity because I think it succinctly describes the four diagrams below. (I thank Patrick Byrne for the title, which he suggested after reading my Visualising Collective Knowledge post.) Consider the network diagram below. The circles are projects coloured by project type, and sized by in-degree, that is the number of incoming links. The links show reliance by one project on another, and are directed. For example a project building an electricity distribution grid in a new town might be reliant on a project that is building a dam that will produce hydro-electricity.

Now at the moment I am sure you will agree the organisation in question is running a complex portfolio of projects. Paradoxically the detail in this diagram only allows for macro-decisions. For example it is self-evident the large dark-blue and red projects are important, but we can’t really see which projects link to them. Now consider the next map.

The projects are in the same relative position and use the same colour-codes, but I have filtered the relationships to show only those which project managers consider to be critical. The red lines show a relationship where the project manager believes his project is critically reliant on the other project. The blue lines show linkages where the project manager believes, rightly or wrongly, that another project is critically reliant on his project. Already the network is sparser and more informed decisions can be made. Now consider the next map.

Again the projects are in the same relative position and use the same colour-codes, but this time I have filtered the relationships to show only those which project managers consider to be time critical. I have also filtered the network to relationships where the project manager believes his project is critically reliant on the other project to provide infrastructure. Now the strength of this approach becomes plain. Note the large red project is critically dependent on a small dark-blue project and a large dark-blue project. Note also the large dark-blue project in question is critically dependent on a small light blue project. Now consider the final map.

This time I have manipulated the network to provide space between the projects. In so doing complexity has been completely deconstructed. Now it becomes obvious that portfolio success is dependent on the success of the small dark-blue project ‘between’ the large red and dark-blue red projects. Even though the large projects have many projects that are dependent on them they are in turn dependent on the small dark-blue project. Failure or delays in this project are likely to have a cascading effect across the entire portfolio. In this case size does not matter, but understanding project relationships matters, or should matter, to this portfolio manager!

Oh and by the way – Merry Christmas! I’m off to my son’s place, which is a 70 kilometre round trip, for Christmas dinner.

Regards, Graham