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title: Discussions on project complexity

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# Project Complexity (Away Day 2024)

#### Useful Link(s)
- https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/Hut23/blob/main/development/REG-Roles-Matrix.md


# Extract from Discussions
Two lens to view complexity: internal and external

**External complexity indices include:**
- The number of stakeholders
- Managing expectation and stakeholders needs (e.g., different stakeholders with opinions about project road map)
- Organisational challenges
- Data availability/privacy
- Managing Legal/IP issues
- Reputational
- Communication
- Long term maintanability (beyond project duration?)

**Internal complexity indices include:**
- Staff/Resource availability
- Technical difficulty
    - Number of work strands (packages/modules) and communication between them
    - Existing expertise
    - Testing/Continuous Integration
    - Programming language
- Project history / maturity
- Task switching
- Templates (code? project management style in relation to project domain)


**Mapping existing projects on the internal-external complexity spectrum.**

![2024-02-08 at 11.17.49](https://hackmd.io/_uploads/B11GYEGi6.jpg)





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# Discussions

#### Notes
- What is complex for one person might not be complex for someone else.


## What defines a complex project?
Two categories:
- Technically challenging?
    - What does that *mean*? e.g. working on existing codebase vs developing entirely new codebase - either could be very challenging
    - In many ways less relevant (if the project isn't technically challenging you probably wouldn't need Reg to do it)
- Logistics (organisational, structural) challenge?
    - Different stakeholders with opinions about project road map. Who can expectation be managed?


## What are project levels?


## Factors
- Length of time (e.g., a simple project can morph into a complex one over time)
- Openness (specific vs. very open-ended, less-defined)
- Complexity

### Logistical complexity
- Different/range of research partners and stakeholders
    - Different needs and expectations
- Organisational challenges
- Communication
- Availability of and access to data
    - Data privacy




### Technical complexity
- Number of staff
- How these can change over time
- Access to 

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