Systems Engineering to improve the governance in complex project environments

•The performance of projects in complex environments is usually poor.•A key project success factor is optimal governance.•Systems Engineering (SE) is developed to manage projects in complex environments.•SE can successfully transform project governance from project based to system based.•The paper shows how SE tools and approaches transform project governance.

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.