It's All About Risk
By Denise DeCarlo

As a project manager, it all comes down to RISK. How much risk are you willing to take? How much risk is your customer willing to tolerate? Are you a risk taker, risk neutral or risk adverse - or do you even know? Each and every day project managers make key decisions that lead you to the path of project completion. Sprinkled within those decisions are opportunities to identify, evaluate, and consider the risk(s) related to project success. Come with me on a journey to discover for yourself a process YOU can go through as you address and monitor risk for your projects.

Let's begin with the harsh realities. NOBODY seems to have time for planning. Typically you're given a project that's already underway and you haven't even defined the scope completely. Typical scene? How you handle this situation is the difference between you being an "ok" project manager and one of the best! It's your choice.

You can integrate basic risk management into your project without your project stakeholders even realizing what you're doing (This doesn't mean your stakeholders won't be involved!) Risk management involves 1) Risk Identification 2) Risk Assessment and Analysis 3) Risk Response Planning and 4) Risk Monitoring and Control (Thanks PMI®!!). However, it's HOW you implement these processes that can make a big difference in the success of your project.

Risk Identification - involves the identification and documentation of the risk (positive and negative) that could impact your project. It includes the obvious and not so obvious things such as; lack of technical training for your staff, lack of commitment from the customer for enough resources, using bleeding edge technology, needing to implement something quickly, grappling with defining requirements clearly and completely. The key to risk identification is involving the RIGHT people to identify what the risks are for this given project. As knowledgeable as you, the project manager, may be - you are simply one person with your given viewpoint and experiences. Hold a "risk workshop" where you actually brainstorm with the customer, sponsor, team members, end users, impacted business units and any other experts specific to the solution you are implementing. Document ALL ideas that surface from the meeting. Ensure it is CLEAR what the identified risks are. It's ideal to have someone facilitate this session, but if required, the project manager could provide the facilitation. By involving the "right" people, this greatly increases your chances of identifying the various risk items that may impact your project. The workshop, however, serves another very important role: obtaining buy-in from the stakeholders on what the risk items are for this project. If one of the risk events does surface later in the project, they won't be as "surprised" by the event. In the event a new risk surfaces that the stakeholders did not identify - less finger pointing occurs because everyone had a chance to identify risks at the onset of the project. Please keep in mind that as your project evolves and scope changes, you need to re-visit the risk identification process. This is NOT a one-time shot at the beginning of the project.

continue>>