Quantum Project Management, Large Complex Projects, and Entanglement

Introduction

In Quantum Project Management¹ I continued a journey which has spanned several decades as I first studied the unacceptably high “failure” rates of large complex projects, identified some root causes and suggested various focus areas² to address the observed deficiencies. Along that journey, I observed that classical project management theory failed us at scale and complexity, constrained by its founding and grounded on straightforward, decomposable projects that were well-bounded. At various points along that journey, I compared what needed to happen as being analogous to the break in thought and theory that occurred as both quantum theory and relativistic theory emerged in the physics domain. I suggested that a new theory of project management³ needed to emerge and suggested some of the analogies which linked the required elements of this new theory even more closely to the transformations that quantum and relativistic theories brought to classical physics.  

While this journey began with a focus on scale, today, it is focused on complexity and scale. Along the way, the importance of system thinking became even more apparent, as did the open systems nature of large complex projects. Stakeholders and their stakeholders were ever more important elements in the open systems context, which is the nature of all quantum systems and, in effect, were a large part of the spacetime⁴ in which a project is set. This spacetime, or surrounding ecosystem if you will, is highly determ...