Tag Archives: risk management

Every project is a journey of uncertainty. How can we complete the challenges of each journey successfully? By identifying, evaluating, and responding to our project risks consistently. Let’s focus on the what, why, and when of evaluating project risks. What is the best way to evaluate risks? There are many ways to evaluate risks. Each has its place. In general, project managers perform qualitative and quantitative risk analysis. What’s the difference? Qualitative risk analysis is …

I’ve been managing projects for about 30 years or so, far longer than I’ve been writing about it. Along the way, I’ve collected a few useful thoughts that never made it into an article or blog post or book. At first, I was just jotting notes on paper. Then I took to creating short text files, saved to a folder. The last few years, I’ve been using OneNote to capture those fleeting thoughts. Here are …

As I’ve noted in other articles, a risk is an uncertainty that matters. Some event has a significant probability of occurring, and there will be a significant consequence if it does. A risk represents a threat, and a wise project team endeavors to identify project threats and analyze them for effective strategies, so that the probability of occurrence can be reduced or the consequences reduced. Or both. Of Mice and Risk Management Consider the following …

Project managers can use several tools to identify project risks, including interviews, brainstorming, checklists, assumption analysis, cause-and-effect diagrams, the nominal group technique, and affinity diagrams. One of my favorite techniques is the SWOT analysis, where you and your team can identify and prioritize strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Once you’ve completed the SWOT analysis, you will have identified opportunities (positive risks) and threats (negative risks), inputs for your risk register. The information can help you …

Project managers know that risk management is an ongoing process, and risk identification happens throughout the project life cycle. In many projects, the team is empowered to draft risk log entries. Of course, one of the basic requirements in identifying project risks is describing each risk in such a way that it is meaningful to management and other stakeholders who aren’t part of the project team. If you’ve ever seen a risk log entry like …

The best type of medicine is preventive. Everyone fundamentally knows that it is easier to tackle a problem in its beginning stages rather than waiting until it becomes a full-blown catastrophe. If you feel yourself starting to get sick, you will take medicine so you do not get knocked out for a week. In a post for The Project Risk Coach, Harry Hall elaborates on how to utilize this mindset with risk management. All Better …

Being overly optimistic is a rampant problem across all fields, but very prevalent in IT. IT remains unrealistic in their expectations, and worse, they are not taking responsibility for the consequences of these assumptions. An article for IEEE Spectrum by Robert N. Charette explores this pervasive problem. A Sunshiny Sickness “Hubble Psychology” is the “over optimism” disease and is often cited as the root cause for IT project failure. Basically this is the idea that …

Any successful organization is able to identify, evaluate, and manage any operational risk that may arise. These risks can range from a failed business process to an external event. In a post at the Project Risk Coach, Harry Hall elaborates on how to develop a plan to manage operational risk. Handling the Biggest Risks There are four types of risks organizations need to be aware of: Process risk People risk System risk External event risk …