What Is Your Risk Management Philosophy II #pmot
December 3, 2009 @ How to Manage a Camel - Project Management and Recruitment from DanS
In the November issue of Project Management Tipoffs, we at Arras People invited our readers to provide us with some inspired words with regards to their individual philosophy about risk management. We wanted to gauge the best responses not so much on length and volume, but on three main things:
- Perspective – Short, succinct, informal, but to the point
- Personality – As Jules said in Pulp Fiction, ‘Personality goes a long way.’
- Adaptability – Can our readers take these words and plug it into their everyday work lives, especially when dealing with risk?
The prize for our winning response was a free, brand new copy of Public-Sector Project Management: Meeting the Challenges and Achieving Results by David W. Wirick, PMP, CMA and Visiting Scholar at the John Glenn School of Public Affairs, Ohio State University. The book was reviewed in Tipoffs by our own Lindsay Scott, and will be re-published for our How to Manage a Camel audience tomorrow.
As to the the book giveaway itself, there were a wealth of quality responses throughout the UK, and some more solid responses from devoted Tipoffs readers from as far away as the Southern USA, and we wanted to share with you just a taste of what risk management means to our readers…
Richard Elliott IT & Services Professional from Rochester…
“Make time in understanding both the people and the business/department that you’re dealing with and what makes both tick. The risks in failing to deliver well organised projects, whether public or private, remain the same. The numbers may be bigger in the public sector, but failure is failure whichever way you look at it. It takes more than following the textbook’s guide on Scope and Stakeholder Management, it takes the ability to apply interpersonal skills and a large dose of common sense, throughout the project life cycle, in order to provide a greater guarantee of success. After all, it’s not frameworks, guides, knowledge or methodologies that deliver projects, it’s people.”
Fernan Rodriguez is a public sector Project Manager in London…
“Working in local government, I would say: Conservative approach, more risk adverse as a lot of the risks are hidden because the scope is poorly established and very dependant on subjective reasons (i.e. public consultation or interpretation of the reality by the council senior management or by the counsellors). Reputational and financial risks are the most important ones. Lastly, as contracts are very complicated, I try to understand how the different fund streams and conditions contribute to the risk profile.”
Chuck Graham is a Program Manager from Huntsville, Ala…
“My philosophy of risk management:
1) To have a well developed process fro continuous risk management
2) To have a risk management plan tailored for the project
3) To have frequent regular reviews of risks, issues, and mitigations
4) To pay attention to risk management – continually!”
Martin Doughty is an IT Project Manager from Huntingdon…
“‘Prevention is better than reaction’
Or to put it another way, prevent the risks becoming issues.’
Work out what can go wrong with each project, from the mundane (allowing 3% slippage for sicknesses), through the usual suspects (scope creep) right up to the disaster scenarios (use your imagination for this one).
Once you have identified risks see what you can do to prevent the their occurrence. See what cross cover you can get to handle sicknesses; Get the project scope nailed down early on to prevent creep; etc, etc.”
Our winner, though, is Dr. Brendan D’Cruz, who heads the Newport Business School’s Business & Computing Department. For his winning response, Dr. D’Cruz tapped into the sage knowledge of one of the more famous fictional characters of the last 20 years. Oddly enough, said fictional character shares a home state with Chuck Graham…
“I ally my philosophy to the ‘Forrest Gump’ approach in that “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get”, however given you select the box, then you surely have some control over the choices and their associated risks. The more you can influence those choices, the better the actual outputs and outcomes. So in terms of risk, the classic risk identification, risk analysis, risk handling, risk avoidance and risk transfer approaches still apply, but you make them work for you. If you want to avoid risk altogether, then don’t buy the box in the first place!”
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