What is Approaches to Complexity

Complexity is a difficult concept to grasp. This chapter aims to provide a quick but thorough overview of the field of complexity for those project professionals and researchers who are interested in working with complex systems. In an effort to clearly express the constituent ontological world view of complexity a funneling approach is employed in this chapter i.e. the discussion is presented in the manner of going from the general to the specific. The chapter first presents a discussion on complexity in general and differentiates between complex, complicated, and simple systems. Then the discussion moves into the complexity within the domain of projects. The thoughts constituting project complexity are presented from the perspective of ‘complexity of projects' and ‘complexity in projects'. Along the way the chapter also proposes a framework of complexity that may prove useful for understanding complexity further. After reading this chapter the reader will be in a better position to understand the contemporary debates in the literature on complexity.