ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the characteristics of complexity to provide an understanding of what constitutes a complex programme. It explores the reason for programme failure associated with complexity. The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation Australia's national science and research agency, identifies two properties that set a complex system apart from one that is merely complicated: emergence and self-organization. The starting point for improving the success of complex programmes is to understand why they fail, or indeed why they might fail. The Complex Programme Maturity Model includes an assessment framework called the variability index. This determines the complexity of change associated with the programme being undertaken using five categories varying from the least complex at level 1 to the most complex at level 5. Many of the tools for managing Directional Complexity have their origins in Soft Systems Thinking and cognitive psychology and most of the tools for managing structural complexity can trace their origins to cybernetics.
