Complexity Measurement of a Project Activity

METHODOLOGY FOR MEASURING PROJECT COMPLEXITY

Introduction
Project managers and practioners in the area of project management frequently describe their projects as simple or complex when discussing management issues [1]. This indicates a practical acceptance that complexity makes a difference to the management of projects [2]. Complexity models provides project managers and leadership teams with direction on how to set up a project and manage it based on its level of complexity so that risk can be minimised [3]. Further there is an increasing agreement that understanding complexity is important for project management because of the difficulties associated with decisions making and goal attainment that appear to be related to complexity [4].It has been suggested that to achieve a better understanding of a project, its complexities should be measured so that fresh approaches can be developed for systematically reducing complexity [5].

Researchers are of the view that measurements are the key for controlling any process because it is difficult to manage what cannot be measured [6]. Further researchers developing a metric for overall cycle time effectiveness for concerted productivity improvement efforts in the service sectors also holds a similar view as what gets measured gets done and improved. However, there is no standard approach to measure service performance as each industry is unique [7]. Due to the unavailability of acceptable quantitative metrics, most companies do this task subjectively. However, the disadvantages of subjective estimates are myriad as they are lengthy and require much work from respondents and investigators [8]. Further it has been reported that they are inaccurate, biased and sensitivity analysis is not easily performed on them [9]. To improve this situation, there is a need to define a good metric which will reduce subjectivity while estimating complexity of a project activity.

Influence of Human Resources on Complexity
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