Category Archives: Technology@Risk® – Howard M. Wiener

#119 – ARE WE SOWING THE SEEDS OF OUR OWN DESTRUCTION? – HOWARD M. WIENER

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Howard Wiener PixI’m becoming increasingly concerned that we’re on our way to creating an environment that will breed domestic terrorists and enable foreign ones.

First and most importantly, we’re creating an environment in which people are marginalized. This is exactly the mechanism that has spawned numerous splinter groups and terrorist organizations in the Middle East and Northern Africa. These groups have certainly exaggerated and publicized their marginalization to bolster their own agendas, but there’s a germ (or more) of truth in many cases. Continue reading →

#115 – STRUCTURING ICT MANAGEMENT TO ALIGN IT WITH THE ENTERPRISE PART II: UNDERSTANDING AS IS – HOWARD M. WIENER

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Howard Wiener PixIn the previous post, I defined a simple hierarchy for portraying the Enterprise:

  • Strategy—What markets will we serve and how will we position ourselves in them?
  • Business Model—What products and services will we sell? What characteristics will they have? How will they be priced? How will we publicize and advertise them?
  • Operating Model—How will we produce what we will sell? What capabilities are required?
  • Operational Architecture—How will we design and enable our organization to provide the capabilities needed?

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#102 – ASSUMPTIONS: WHAT YOU KNOW MAY KILL YOU – HOWARD WIENER

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In his post Cause of Death:  Invalid Assumptions, my colleague Mark Moore observed Howard Wiener Pixthat project risk management often excludes consideration of underlying assumptions on which event probabilities and prospective impacts are based.  Obviously, we cannot operate without relying on what we know or we would have to reinvent the wheel every time we had to go somewhere.  On the other hand, failing to challenge what we believe we know or to consider the possibility that there are relevant factors about which we have no idea (so-called “unknown unknowns”) can result in vastly underestimating risks or missing opportunities.  This article will raise questions more than it will provide answers but it does suggest that some changes in PM discipline can help reduce the risks our assumptions create. Continue reading →

#101 – CAUSE OF DEATH: INVALID ASSUMPTIONS – MARK MOORE

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As seasoned project managers, we are very familiar with identifying and managing risks (though too often, the activity stops with identifying and we “wing it” from there).  I’ve OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAwritten here on CERM Insights and elsewhere about assigning a weighted grade to risks based on the likelihood of the risk becoming an issue and the impact to your project should that happen.  From there you manage the higher graded risks more closely as they embody the possibility of causing the most damage to your project and hindering the success.

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#99 – ALL MANAGEMENT IS RISK MANAGEMENT – HOWARD M. WIENER

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Howard Wiener PixWhat is Risk?   Many people think about risk as the potential impact of an exogenous event, like a hurricane or an auto accident.  However, it is much broader than that.  Risk is uncertainty with respect to attainment of a desired result.

Management, according to Wikipedia, is “. . .  the function that coordinates the efforts of people to accomplish goals and objectives by using available resources efficiently and effectively.” Continue reading →