Coping with Complexity: Development Practitioners Forum

This course provided development practitioners with critical frameworks, approaches, methods, and tools to manage development projects in complex and uncertain environments. Combining systems thinking, adaptive management, and digital innovations like AI, it challenged the limits of traditional planning, monitoring and evaluation and emphasized collaborative and responsive strategies in development contexts.

OBJECTIVES

• Understand the nature and implications of complexity in development projects.

• Explore limitations of traditional planning and management tools.

• Apply systems thinking and adaptive approaches to project cycle management.

• Learn to integrate digital tools, including AI, for enhanced decision-making.

• Build personal toolkits for adaptive leadership and collaborative management.

CONTENT

The course was structured around eight thematic blocks to gradually build participants’ capabilities for working in complex development settings:

Understanding Development Complexity
Explored why traditional project management struggles with uncertainty and change. Introduced the hard vs. soft project typology and the Stacey Diagram framework to differentiate contexts.

Systems Thinking for Complex Environments

Introduced systems thinking as a paradigm shift for project management. Highlighted principles such as interdependence, emergence, and feedback loops.

Critical Review of Traditional Planning Tools

Investigated the origins and limitations of tools like the Logical Framework Approach, and presented alternative methods more suitable for dynamic, unpredictable settings.

Digital Tools for Managing Complexity

Demonstrated the potential practical use of Generative AI across the project lifecycle and guided the design of AI assistants for development project management tasks.

Systems Mapping and Boundaries

Trained participants to identify system components, interconnections, domains, and attractors, using hands-on exercises to visualize complexity and systemic influences.

Designing Adaptive Strategies

Explored how to develop complexity-informed Theories of Change using methods like backcasting, and how to implement these within adaptive management frameworks.

Evaluating Complex Interventions

Addressed the challenges of evaluation in complex environments using real-world case studies, including the integration of quantitative and qualitative methods.

Leadership and Collaboration for Complexity

Focused on the role of managers in uncertain settings, emphasizing emotional intelligence, facilitation, and collaborative leadership practices suitable for fluid project environments.

ACHIEVEMENT

Participants completed an intensive, hands-on programme, gaining theoretical knowledge, practical tools, and collaborative experiences to improve the relevance and impact of their development initiatives in complex and uncertain environments.

NUMBER OF HOURS: 35