ABSTRACT
For 25 years, leading writers in the field of project management have been suggesting that before the project team start planning a project, they should develop a strategy for how they plan to implement it (Morris and Hough, 1987; Turner, 2009, first edition 1993). Project managers have a tendency when they have a project to plan just to start by stuffing activities into Microsoft Project, without first thinking about the key elements of the project and how they should be addressed. It is important on all projects to start by developing a basic strategy for how the project should be undertaken, but it is particularly important on complex project. On complex projects, a small change in input conditions can lead to a very large change in output conditions. So it is important to think first about what the desired end point is and work back to defining the input conditions for the project.
