Project Management at the Edge of Chaos

Foreword.- Preface.- Acknowledgement.- Introduction Social techniques and complexity.- Value-creating and value-destroying complexity.- Means of complexity regulation.- Organizational control and ordering parameters (fluide organization).- Shielding of complexity.- Self-organization.- Leadership in complex social systems.- Consequences for management systems (including agile, lean).- Glossary.- Index.

Dr. Alfred Oswald (IFST - Institute for Social Technologies GmbH, 52223 Stolberg, Germany) earned his doctorate in Theoretical Physics at the RWTH Aachen University. He is Managing Director of the IFST-Institute for Social Technologies GmbH consulting institute, responsible for project management, transformation and innovation management. He is head of the special interest group for Agile Management of the GPM (German Association for Project Management e.V.). His field of work is the efficiency and effectiveness of organizations through innovative social technologies. He has many years of experience in the management of innovative and complex projects, as well as in the transformation of project-oriented organizations into high-performance organizations.

Dr. Jens Köhler (BASF SE, 67056 Ludwigshafen, Germany) received his Diploma in Physics from Bonn University and already began tackling the subject of complexity in his doctorate. He focuses on the digitalization in research and development. His specialty is the regulation of social complexity to lever the efficiency and effectiveness of project teams, being inevitable for successfully forming the digital transformation.


Roland Schmitt (69469 Weinheim, Germany) first gained experience in managing business and software development processes after his studies in Electrical Engineering. For more than ten years he has managed IT projects in the logistic and transport sector at DB Systel GmbH in Frankfurt am Main. His postgraduate management studies at the University of Portsmouth in the UK focused his attention on the psycho social aspects of cooperation between people. Since then, his research interest has been the transfer of theoretical findings of self organization and neuro leadership into professional management practice.