arborg.se – Research Methodology and Applications
Bo Strangert (RD3)
Comments on the context of planning
There is no highway to creative planning in complex projects. By being aware of constraints in your present planning context, you can possibly find some ways to avoid making sterile or biased concept development and experimentation (CD&E). Some obstacles, such as external regulations and budget restrictions, are quite manifest. Others may be less apparent, for example, cultural predispositions or professional biases.
The context of planning is here conceived as "all circumstances besides the focal task factors that can influence a particular planning process significantly". In the case of complex projects, the set of potential circumstances will be very large and have fuzzy boundaries to the originally defined task or problem structure. During the development work, new conceptual and other factors from the context may be introduced into the task structure and old ones removed; this dynamics is an inherent characteristic of complex projects.
Thus, the planning process involves much exchange and transformation of information within and between various knowledge domains, and the process should not be structured fully beforehand but instead free to make use of feedback and restructuring attempts. This will indeed raise high demands on flexible control of planning.
One question is how to navigate efficiently among existing contextual obstacles and possibilities. This is a key to good project management. Any experienced project leader in the Defense Forces knows about the strict formal budget restrictions, regulations, and time schedules which are characteristic of the superordinate authorities' obligations, and only occasionally possible to change within a project period. At this point, the initial political and strategic decisions on project goals and resources play a decisive role. Nevertheless, cleverly designed feedback of intermediate results to high-level executives may sometimes change the prospects – more about that in later papers.
Another task of project management is to navigate among possible knowledge resources to integrate them into a coherent multidimensional knowledge structure. That means involving different human expertise and databases, as well as collecting new information through experimentation. This stage involves intrinsic complications because earlier knowledge has been collected and documented according to specific purposes, and human experts likewise act according to their own professional perspectives and roles.
There can be unwanted effects of domain specialists' unique competencies and perspectives. For example, the modeling power of systems science and IT may lead to an excessive formal CD that is not balanced by corresponding empirical verification and validation. Another common complication is that well-structured engineering part-solutions can be prioritized at the expense of work with major ill-structured soft problems. Thus, well-known paths are preferred, even if they don't lead to a solution to complex problems. A contrasting biased approach may be found with psychosocial expertise, who tend to concentrate unilaterally on human effects rather than on corresponding causal or design factors. A weakness of methodologists and statisticians may be that they have biased preferences and experiences of certain techniques, which don't correspond to project requirements.
Hence, the diversity of competencies needed in a complex project presents the project manager with the very difficult task of both formally structuring CD&E and coordinating the interactions between participants and other sources of information. Let us call these two aspects of management for the formal architecture of planning and its corresponding process coordination, respectively.
The integration of knowledge must be made through cooperation between experts with diverse perspectives and competencies. The project manager should know that a possible rank hierarchy between knowledge domains and their specialists can bias the development work. It's a well-known fact that rapid technological advancements influence the direction of softer branches, such as method and personnel development. It's safe to look upon the expert as rational within his or her own area of competence but as one-sided and naive vis-á-vis other areas. Consequently, the challenge of cooperation needs to be carefully managed!
One way of outlining the planning process and the formal architecture of planning
View the initial project planning as forming the groundwork of an open system. Then the system is defined as a project space, interacting with its context of knowledge domains and superordinate authority, as well as with a space of operations and events in "real-life". The project space includes the subspaces of CD and E. This description is based on the "Levels-of-analysis model" (see Figure 1 in Strangert, 2013, RD1).
The activities in the project space have two coordinated purposes: One is to produce representations (CD) of real-life operations and events; the other (E) is to test representations of reality by observation and making controlled interventions. This is simply the Scientific Method.
It is optional to display either the activities (CD&E) in the spaces or their products (i.e., conceptual structures and empirical results). Figure 1 in Strangert (2013) and its variant Figure 1 below in this paper is a mix of the two display alternatives. The formal architecture is represented by a superstructure of labeled "slots" to be filled with concrete concepts and empirics in the spaces. Examples of slots are: "subgoal," "concept structure," "possible experimentation," "former undocumented operations and experiences," "domain knowledge," "collaboration". The process coordination is roughly indicated by task descriptions and arrows.
Figure 1 illustrates some of the first steps in forming the architecture of planning. Its structure is compatible with the case approach summarized by Strangert (2013). The project about the relation between collateral damage and military effectiveness is decided by an authority after a foregoing political and strategic treatment; we omit its prehistory here. The directives include some specifications about direction, timetable, resources, supervision, and organization.
Figure 1. An outline for planning the case study.
A project team analyzes the general goal and elaborates it into a preliminary hierarchy of subgoals and a final goal. The goal formulations are tentative and involve only inclusive requirement specifications, such as to start by inquiring into technical possibilities and tactical needs. Later, the inventions are integrated and tested in realistic contexts.
These goal formulations suggest that CD should begin by parallel inquiries about technical and tactical means. Different research teams participate from the corresponding knowledge domains. The progressing CD is supported by various forms of experimentation (E). In a later stage, the results shall be integrated into comprehensive concept structures. This calls for teamwork across knowledge domains and the use of more advanced methods of experimentation.
In the final project stages, the concept structure should also be adjusted to the outcomes of other related projects. It is necessary to ensure the validity of results when the new tactical and technical means are applied in the real-life context. The field applications demand more advanced evaluation methods, too.
Process coordination
The preceding section shows how the formal architecture of planning depends on process coordination, and vice versa. Some evolving formal outline is necessary to control the continuing CD&E, though it has to be updated recurrently through process coordination. This essential characteristic of process control loops is omitted in Figure 1.
Project management demands continuous situation awareness to avoid or handle impediments and to advance creative work. Some difficulties can be prevented by cautious recruitment and the introduction of team members and specialists. But on the whole, the process is about contingent management.
The Levels-of-analysis model also includes cognitive and communicative dimensions that are not displayed in its two-dimensional representation in Figure 1. These dimensions are especially important to describe and analyze regarding process coordination because they can help the project manager to explain and predict how the participating agents will think and act in tasks and situations. Figure 2 can give a glimpse of what it means.
Figure 2. Illustration of cognitive and communicative process perspectives.
Figure 2 shows cognitive and communicative perspectives at two points in time (vertical planes at t0 and tk) against a horizontal plane with objective representations of formal concept structures (CD), experimentation (E), and their corresponding knowledge and event contexts.
The circles on the vertical planes symbolize different agents' knowledge with respect to the amount (coded as circle area) and content (color code). The main communicative links between agents are illustrated with lines. It is assumed that the planning process can be represented as dynamic transformations of information between the objective (product) project states and the agents' subjective information, influenced by their intercommunication. More about that in later papers.
References
Strangert, B. (2013). A case approach to applied research methods. www.arborg.se
