Abstract
The “projectification” of Western societies has been consolidated by a number of studies and now calls for various adaptations in the managerial framework of project management. Faster rates of change in complex environments antagonize the traditional risk assessment approach and demand a more dynamic approach. A framework commonly used for understanding the challenges of complexity in the modern business environment is VUCA. VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. In order to mitigate the impact of a VUCA environment on complex projects, organizations and project leaders need to know the type and severity of challenges they are dealing with in each unique project. This study explores the VUCA framework in the context of projects and suggests that the VUCA approach can enhance the conventional risk assessment procedure. The study also drafts an accessible diagnostic tool to assess the VUCA dimensions a project is facing, so that project managers can effectively isolate “fat tail” risk events. The tool is tested on five complex projects in the manufacturing industry and its effectiveness is discussed.
Highlights
Organizations increasingly use projects as a vehicle for transformation and implementation of strategic initiatives with the aim to stay competitive
Interviews with all the participants who took part in the survey indicated a strong confidence in which each aspect of the projects under investigation could be situated in the VUCA risk assessment matrix
The overall trends in weights indicated high internal consistency of statement scores and the comparison of scores across projects indicated that the subjective evaluation influences the numerical score
Summary
Organizations increasingly use projects as a vehicle for transformation and implementation of strategic initiatives with the aim to stay competitive. This trend is generally recognized as “projectification” of an organization, a term that was arguably first mentioned in this context in 1995 by Christophe Midler [1]. “projectification” is the way to adapt these permanent processes to the new context. It is used in the public and global domains to describe the shift towards more emphases on projects and project management. Wald et al [2] and Schoper et al [3]
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