Thriving at the Edge of Chaos: Managing Projects as Complex Adaptive Systems 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

As the world hunkers down and most knowledge workers start working remotely, the concepts Jonathan presents in this book stand traditional project management approaches on their head and offer an alternative which is nimbler and more flexible, while providing the accountability that is needed in a distributed work model.

As an author and advisor to tech company's, I am constantly seeking innovative ways to stay ahead of the curve. Jonathan, once again, gives the reader of this new book thoughtful ways to manage complexity. Early in my career, I was on a team that managed 12-15 year project plans for the design of nuclear power plants. Between the scale of the plan, changing regulations from the NRC, and the Three Mile Island disaster, current-day best practices didn't allow us to adapt at the speed of change.This book introduces and details rational, out the box approaches for project management in today's complex world. While a "keep it simple" project approach has always been my preference, there are too many moving parts in today's global, digitally-driven business world to keep our head buried in the sand, while chaos bursts on the scene at every turn. The forest and the trees are not just a set of objects, but to see the true picture of the health of that forest, one needs to see the holistic, current set of relationships in order to know how to proceed.The book is visionary, yet practical, and highly recommended for any leader, project manager, student of today's business reality.

I picked up this book based on a recommendation from a colleague. I was looking for tools for managing the many concurrent projects my company runs. What I found was so much more.The book provides an excellent introduction to Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) and shows how the concepts of CAS can be applied to project management. Sapir has provided readers with a simple, yet powerful approach to tackling all kinds of projects, strategic initiatives, and endeavors. Highly recommended!

Jonathan masterfully articulates what critical chain project management is, why it’s important, and most importantly, how to implement it in your organization.This book helped me understand the flaws of traditional waterfall and agile processes when applied to highly repetitive and interdependent business processes.I highly recommend this book to anyone who sees inefficiencies in how your business executes complex projects and would like to apply critical chain project management tactics to remove those inefficiencies.

As we all learn to work from home and how we can thrive when the Chaos is upon us, Jonathan offers a clear guide on how we can adapt in a complex technologically dependent work place to ensure where-ever we work, we don't drop the ball.

This book brilliantly verbalises why so many project managers have difficulty in consistently delivering results.I like the way Jonathan doesn't pull his punches. Projects have not changed in nature over recent years. That is not why we need to change how we manage them. They have always been examples of complex adaptive systems, and if you try and manage a CAS in the way that works for a complicated (but not adaptive) system you get....well check out any research report into project performance.Sapir's hypothesis is that Flyvbjerg's iron law of project management (Over budget, over time, under benefits, over and over again) is to a significant extent, the result of this misapplication of management methods.Today's conventional planning & project control methods are totally unsuited to managing the CAS-nature of all but the most trivial projects.Until now I didn't find a single book that pulled together the underpinning science and the practical tools. This book does that. Firstly helping understand 'Why?', with an accessible overview of the science of complex systems, and then suggesting implementable ideas on 'How?' to put it in practice.My only very minor quibble is that the book claims it doesn't apply to one-off and software (Agile) projects. Don't let that put you off - most of it does apply IMO.