Early warning signs in complex projects

This paper gives initial results from a partially PMI -funded study looking at why methods fail to pick up early warning signals, how current project assessment methods try to uncover early warning signs of problems, and how successful current project assessment methods are in trying to uncover early warning signs of problems. The literature tells us much about these questions¿in particular, the extent to which, and how, project assessments in the chosen countries/sectors are executed under established governance frameworks, and some indications of the difficulties involved, particularly in the case of complex projects. But this study also tries to supplement this with a study of actual organizations, looking at both what actually happens in practice and what is espoused, thus also trying to observe and understand how project assessments can handle complexity in projects as well as their context, and which are the most important early warning signals to look for in the different contexts.