More is different

Megaprojects have characterized all civilizations since the dawn of mankind. In the last decades, they are spreading not only in developed and rich countries, but almost anywhere in the world. In addition, their dimension is growing in terms of cost, impact, and complexity. Research on megaprojects is pretty recent: the first broad study has been carried out by Miller and Lessard (2000), having as a core concept that megaprojects are shaped, not chosen or planned. The message of Miller and Lessard is still valid: makes no sense to apply a planning or selection process for a megaproject, as it will not become a piece of the environment where it will be placed, but it will literally make the environment, dramatically modify the environment where it is located. Miller and Lessard focused their attention on large engineering projects (LEPs); today, researches expanded the perimeter of such studies to megaprojects, including large-scale events such as Olympics and large IT projects. The three major contributors to current megaproject research are Bent Flyvbjerg, Edward Merrow, and Peter E. D. Love. Determining whether a project is a megaproject is not immediate: there is a threshold related to the budget invested (some authors set a lower limit to 100 M€/$, some others at 1B€/$); in addition, it is pretty clear that phenomena characterizing megaprojects are emerging even in project investing an order of magnitude less, but facing a large variety of stakeholders: this is the case of several IT projects. It is pretty clear that it is a matter of complexity in the project’s (internal and external) environment, but it stays unclear how to assess the level of complexity first, and how to govern it, later. What is evident is that traditional management is not working for a megaproject. More simply, traditional management is not enough. Applying a traditional “Deming” approach Plan-Do-Check-Act simply is not enough: organizations performing megaprojects still need good managers able to apply traditional management at tactic level, but what is missing in this approach is the long-run strategy enabling a megaproject to shape the environment where is operating in the best possible way. At the same time, the public debate on megaprojects is far from being agreed upon. In the last few years, the topic is particularly relevant at the EU level. In fact the decision-making process on which infrastructure (LEP) should be funded and which not by the public sector has been criticized by new “sovranist” political parties. For example, studies both in favour and against the funding of the same infrastructure have been published by different academics, even belonging to the same institution.