#17 – BUILDING A RISK INVENTORY TO PREPARE FOR MANAGING PROJECT RISK (IV) – HOWARD WIENER

Howard Wiener PixIn the previous posts in this thread we looked at various types and classes of uncertainties and discussed how and when they are likely to be identified and selected for inclusion in a project’s Risk Register.  In the final post of this series, we will look at how to build a repository that can streamline this process by storing uncertainties and qualifying information about them in a structure that facilitates querying and filtering them.

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#16 – BUILDING A RISK INVENTORY TO PREPARE FOR MANAGING PROJECT RISKS – HOWARD WIENER

Howard Wiener PixIn the first two posts (Managing Project Risk the PMI Way and Building a Risk Inventory To Manage Project Risks) in this thread we looked at two classes of project uncertainties—‘macro’ uncertainties, whose impacts are felt at the project level, and ‘micro’ uncertainties, whose impact is discernible at the level of individual Work Packages.  Given the PMI project management lifecycle, these uncertainties become concrete and must be dealt with at two different points.  ‘Macro’ uncertainties must be dealt with, or at least must begin to be dealt with, with during the Initiation process group.  In fact, many of these uncertainties must be identified and management of them started before Initiation even begins.  ‘Micro’ uncertainties can only be identified and materialized fully as activities in Planning are occurring.  Continue reading

#16 – RISK/OPPORTUNITY BALANCE – LINDA WESTFALL

Linda Westfall HeadshotFUTURE THINKING
The future seems to be coming at us at an ever-increasing rate.  As effective managers and practitioners, we must think proactively about all the possibilities that the future may bring, but those possibilities have uncertain outcomes.  We call those possibilities opportunities if we believe they will have positive outcomes.  For example, we have the opportunity to successfully complete a project and make a substantial profit or we have an opportunity to introduce a new product into the marketplace first and capture the lion’s share of that market.  We call those possibilities risks if we believe they will have negative outcomes.  For example, we have the risk of not successfully completing that same project and losing our investment or we may have the risk of our competition beating us to the marketplace with a new product and losing market share. To quote Tom DeMarco, “Moving aggressively after opportunity means running toward rather than away from risk.” Continue reading

#15 – CONTEXT MATTERS WHEN DISCUSSING RISK – MARK JONES

Mark Jones pixAs an enthusiast of LinkedIn’s group discussions, I have seen and contributed to a fair number of discussions on risk within project management.

One thing that strikes me is how the understanding of risk differs depending on the context within a project, and how often these differences lead to confusion.  The participants in one particularly lively discussion relentlessly pursued lengthy dialogs stating and restating their positions only because they were actually talking about two different kinds of risk. Continue reading