Category Archives: Projects@Risk™ – Malcolm Peart

#23 – RISK IN THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY – FRANK PHILLIPS

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Having worked in the insurance industry for many years and many major carriers as an underwriter  – I have heard the word risk about as many times as one can imagine.  But no matter what the coverage in the property and casualty world there is a common risk evaluation process that can be applied. This process can certainly be incorporated into more broad enterprise risk management functions in corporations. In taking the Chartered Property and Casualty Underwriter (CPCU designation) tests there was invariably a question related to implementing the risk evaluation process. Continue reading →

#23 – MAGIC WORDS AND ENCHANTED BEANS – MARK MOORE

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Mark MooreSeveral discussions on LinkedIn recently have prompted me to think once again about how we place our projects and organizations at risk – sometimes severe risk – by relying on what amounts to “magic words and enchanted beans”.  And by that, I mean the tendency to either talk about buzzword tactics or strategies or throw tools at problems and believe we have actually implemented them.  Not only does this ignore the hard work of applying something we’ve never done before, it ends up as a fool’s errand and could cost us dearly in the end.  Give you some examples you say?  Certainly!  I’m glad you asked … Continue reading →

#23 – CAN PROJECTS INCORPORATE TOO LITTLE RISK PART II – HOWARD WIENER

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Howard Wiener PixIn the previous post, I discussed an approach to valuing projects using Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis.  In this post, I will use the DCF technique combined with a fixed scenario to demonstrate a difference in Net Present Value (NPV) resulting from implementing a series of projects on an existing platform vs. replacing the aging platform and fulfilling the same requirements with up-to-date tools.  The horizon of the analysis is 20 years.

But first, read our last article on incorporating too little risk. Continue reading →

#22 – CONTEXT MATTERS WHEN DISCUSSING RISK (EVENT RISKS) – MARK JONES

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Mark Jones pixEvent Risk is your typical ‘stuff happens’ risk that pops up over the course of a project. As part of ongoing planning you use the risk register to record them along with any agreed Decision Risks. The vast majority of these can be described in terms of future events with an impact on the project and occurrence uncertainty – once they are certain, i.e. either 100% or 0% probable, they graduate to something else. Continue reading →

#22 – CAN PROJECTS INCORPORATE TOO LITTLE RISK? – HOWARD WIENER

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Howard Wiener PixGenerally, every effort is made to reduce risks in software development projects to ensure achieving functionality, time and cost goals.  One common risk-mitigation practice is to employ established, stable technologies when new, less well-understood or in-transition business processes are involved.  

However, projects supporting longer-term, strategic business initiatives may produce suboptimal results if organizations do not push the envelope in order to maintain currency with evolving technology standards and preserve options to keep the application consistent with market competition and changing business models over its usable life. 

In this post, I begin to explore how we can identify cases in which accepting risks associated with employing newer technologies, architectures or methodologies can add value to a project. Continue reading →