Systems Engineering to improve the governance in complex project environments

Projects delivered in complex environments are often late, over-budget and provide fewer benefits than what were originally expected. Systems Engineering is the emerging paradigm in complex project environments to transform the governance from project based to system based and thereby increase the chance of holistic success. Systems Engineering is a multidisciplinary approach to enable the successful delivery of systems in complex environments through a comprehensive set of approaches, techniques and tools, initially developed in the USA after the Second World War. This paper focuses on how Systems Engineering can transform the governance from project governance to system governance, improving the performance of projects delivered in a complex environment. This paper presents Systems Engineering tools and techniques focusing, in particular, on the most relevant for project management, project governance and stakeholder management. At the end it provides a rich research agenda for further studies. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. APM and IPMA.