This course is a collaboration between the University of Maryland College Park鈥檚 Project Management Center for Excellence and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. While each course stands alone, the series works together to provide the knowledge, skills, and frameworks to lead projects that address Socio-Environmental problems. In this course, we are building from the point of having successfully completed Stakeholder Outreach. This means that the major complex problem has been identified, measured, and distilled into a powerful narrative that can engage stakeholders to drive them to the next step: Stakeholder Collaboration. To get started, we need to orient towards "why" we need to collaborate after collaboration. The answer? Problem complexity. Tackling complexity is a task no one person can do by its definition. Truly complex and wicked problems have no stopping point, no clarity of definition, and change as you try to improve the current state so you must reassess. Complex issues are also defined by a lack of complete information in any one party. The issues involve many standpoints, perspectives, and details partitioned among those involved. That鈥檚 why it鈥檚 鈥渃omplex.鈥� To solve this we need to tackle the problem which is termed 鈥渞equisite variety,鈥� a term coined by David Benjamin and David Komlos in their book 鈥淐racking Complexity,鈥� which is to say we need all the diverse representatives from those parts of the complex problem to bring their unique knowledge and perspective together. In science when we do this it鈥檚 called 鈥淭ransdisciplinary Approaches.鈥� In Project Management we call this 鈥渃ross-disciplinary鈥� and 鈥渃ross-organizational鈥� problem solving. But what鈥檚 unique about Environmental Project Management is the often added problem of no organization existing among the rights holders that are impacted by the problems. So the added job of rallying and organizing these groups is added to the list of challenges for the Environmental Project Leader. Then the work of getting a first view of the complex problem can truly begin.
3.1: Enabling Conditions
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