CIVL 520 Construction Planning and Control Assignment No.: 1 Student No.

.: 71918114 Student Name: DIEGO OROZCO MOJICA Professor: Dr. Alan D. Russell Course: CIVL 520 Construction Planning and Control Activity: Assignment No. 1 Instructions: Write-up of the Article and highlighting the (Reading 1) important lessons and judgments about it. th Date: September 13 , 2011 Reading (Article): Pich, M.T., Loch, C.H., and De Meyer, A. (2002). On Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Complexity in Project Management, Management Science, Vol. 48, No. 8, 1008-1023.

On Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Complexity in Project Management

The articles main objective is to introduce a couple of new or different approaches for the projects management during the planning, the execution (coordination) and the monitoring stages of the project itself for it success. I will briefly explain the main discussion and lessons of the article and then will talk about my judgments or commentaries and recommendation. Basically the authors are trying to explain that assuming a project is modeled as a payoff function that is in function of a network of activities that are part of the project and the state of the world (all the considerations for the project and the environment) analyzed for that activities of the Project. So, it is necessary to do a mapping with the activities considered and the state of the world considered, as a result they obtain a influenced or modified state of world by a transition function or causal model that changes the final Project Payoff. The assumptions gets complicated as soon as they are analyzed more closely to the reality or the probable cases that a project team might have in different kind of projects, what I mean is that the Project will be analyzed with the information that is available. This takes the research to consider the mathematical model more in detail, with signals or triggers to take certain actions, information structures (IS), or determining policies to proceed in some cases to avoid the failure of the project (contingency plans) that are in function of the IS depending on the risk of the considerations again of the activities and state of the world considered. In other words, it can be said that what the authors mainly wants to clarify is that the uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity of a project is in function of the adequacy of the information available. Depending on what is the case for the project in study it could be considered to approach with three Project Management Strategies that are: Instructionism, Learning and Selectionism. Moreover, these strategies can be used separately or can be combined to obtain the most effective strategy to follow for a project manager and of course reduce the uncertainty. Until now to select a strategy it is considered by the authors that depend on the urgency of the project, the amount of learning that can be achieved, the experience or knowledge about the project information, the cost that could generate to use the strategies, and the nature itself of the ambiguity and complexity of the project.

Name: Diego Orozco Mojica Date: 13 September 2011.

Civil Engineering Department

CIVL 520 Construction Planning and Control Assignment No.: 1 Nevertheless, this part of the research it is still developing, since the rules are not clear in when to decide which strategy adopt and other considerations that shall be done to use the strategy, or like the consideration that is necessary a solid and active knowledge of the project manager or team at the moment to apply the recent strategies. Apart from this, the contribution of the research it is widely explained with an extensive literature review and references the background information to develop the research and with a robust and fancy mathematical model the Project runoff function to conclude with two main contributions: the identification of project approaches and the development of the idea of the learning and selectionism strategy as a recent project approach. The Instructionism strategy follows basically certain policies, activities that with an action plan are triggered by monitored signals; where buffers shall be consider in planning. The Classic Project Approaches (such as CPM, GERT, Risk management, etc.) assume an adequate information structure (tasks, schedule, costs, etc.) and are considered to use the instructionism strategy, in other words when the information is adequate. The Learning and Selectionism strategies are used when the information is inadequate. The learning strategy is about to find out the unknown factors in the project and to develop the problem solving skills in determining actions. The selectionism refers more to make a selection of the best project efforts or model from multiple approaches to execute a project analyzing complex systems and finding out the best solution. In my opinion the article is too robust and repeats many times the same thing but in different ways or giving some additional information. It still needs more development as the authors said, because when you start the analysis to see which strategy you can take, in the project terrain you need to know whether your information is adequate or not, but that is relative, there are not specific parameters. I mean, it might or might not be enough information (showing up a high rate of ambiguity and complexity) but it could be enough for an instructionism strategy. It means that it is not so easy to determine which strategy or project approach. Besides, in order to apply the new strategies proposed by the authors, it is necessary more resources that shall not be practical or feasible depending on the project. Also require that the persons understand the strategy and have an extensive knowledge of the project information to use it in the common practice. I agree with some techniques proposed in the learning and selectionism, they are great and seems useful, but it is just that it is necessary to know more information about how to interact more in detail with the proposed strategies. I will recommend it to read it very quickly just to know as a reference about the new tendency of project approaches that are now developing, but at this stage, the research is not that functional or practical for a project manager to could use it in practice, nevertheless the strategies show good ideas that can be adapted in some cases, but it will still be experimental combined with the experience.
Name: Diego Orozco Mojica Date: 13 September 2011. Civil Engineering Department