Playlist-

RISK MANAGEMENT

Articulating risk statements – How NOT to!

About the nugget: As a PM, have you had experiences of raising the roof on some risks and yet nobody seems to pay attention? You are all in a tizzy explaining it to your boss and he is busy looking at his phone! Maybe you are not doing such a good job in communicating the risk that is keeping you awake at night. The first step in effective communication of risks is articulating them well and how not to. The nugget offers simple guidelines that could save you much time in personally explaining the same risks to stakeholders again and again. Better understanding of risks would significantly enable risk owners focus better on what they need to do to help you as the PM and the project. See also, the full playlist of Project Management nuggets.

Hallmarks of sound risk management

About the nugget: Let’s do some soul searching on managing risks! Do you believe you are doing full justice to risk management in your projects? Are your projects succeeding despite your risk management actions?! Are you perhaps overdoing it – seeing ghosts in every dark corner? How well do you tune the degree of risk management to suit the needs of the project and the appetite of stakeholders? The nugget provides the salient points of sound risk management on which you can assess yourself. See also, the full playlist of Project Management nuggets.

How to “control” risks

About the nugget: Seriously – how can you control risks? Aren’t they like acts of God?! Yes, sort of – you certainly cannot definitively say what risk will actually occur or not or how much the actual impact would be. That said, what we are talking about here in “controlling” risks are checks to see what you planned in risk management is actually being executed as envisaged and having the desired effect. In addition, controlling or monitoring is all about keeping an eye on how risks already identified are moving in the probability-impact dimensions. And looking out for new risks that may have emerged. The nugget covers five major areas for you as the PM to monitor and act. See also, the full playlist of Project Management nuggets.

Risk indicators – what are they?

About the nugget: So, you have made a sound risk management plan, identified mitigation actions that have become part of your project plan and are monitoring the project risk profile etc. So, what more do you need? Why these risk indicators you may ask. Well, risk indicators are important symptoms that should form part of your monitoring regimen. They tell you whether a risk that you may have “accepted” is increasing in probability and impact prompting you to think of mitigation actions mid-stream. Risk triggers (a type of risk indicator) alert you that a risk event is about to occur and you better initiate contingency action that you had planned for. And so on. The nugget gives a list of the top five risk indicators that should be in your radar all the time. See also, the full playlist of Project Management nuggets.

Risk Management Essentials

About the nugget: Are you one of the fortunate project managers who have sailed through many of your project without much ado about risk management. Then this nugget is for you – to see how fortunate you have been and how much you may be missing in the big bad risk management picture. Starting with the very core concept of risk & reward, the nugget covers many other aspects such as causes of risks (internal /external), positive risks, pure risks and so on. Sort of a Risk Management 101. See also, the full playlist of Project Management nuggets.

Risk mitigation vs. Contingency actions

About the nugget: One may think that the difference between mitigation actions and contingency actions is clear enough. Is it really? Risk mitigation reduces the impact of the risk. Contingency action also reduces the impact of the risk, right? So, what is the difference? If you are yourself a bit unclear, here is the nugget for you which explains the difference with a familiar risk: “Risk that code developed by fresh college graduates MAY impact the quality and schedule goals of the project”. See also, the full playlist of Project Management nuggets.

Risk reduction leverage – explained

About the nugget: Ok, you have identified top risks, prioritized them and developed response actions like avoidance, transfer, acceptance and mitigation. All of a sudden, you realize that for some critical risks, you have a multitude of possible mitigation actions. All of them look good but they are going to cost significant amounts of money. Since you cannot spend all that you want, you have to choose among the mitigation actions. So, what would be the basis of your selection? The nugget gives you a tool, risk reduction leverage, to be able to make the choice – with an example, the not-uncommon risk of lack of domain expertise as a project risk. See also, the full playlist of Project Management nuggets.

Risk response strategies

About the nugget: This nugget describes the basic risk response strategies: risk avoidance, risk transfer, risk mitigation and risk acceptance. Understanding them clearly would help you propose the right risk responses in a given project context and associated stakeholder risk appetites. You could also employ a combination of risk responses in a project – avoidance some risks if stakeholders feel it is not worth it, outsource some risky work components, mitigate some and accept the rest. The nugget explains it all with examples. See also, the full playlist of Project Management nuggets.

Using Wideband Delphi for risk identification

About the nugget: There are a couple of aspects to understand about risk discovery – one is that risk perceptions tend to vary from person to person, conditioned by their familiarity with the project domain and two, risk perceptions are influenced by the person’s past project experiences. So, taking inputs from multiple experts is a useful approach to minimize individual biases and achieve a comprehensive risk discovery. But then, how do you ensure that one dominant expert is not biasing the opinions of other experts? That’s where Wideband Delphi comes to help. The nugget explains in how to conduct a Wideband Delphi session. See also, the full playlist of Project Management nuggets.

Where to look for Risks?

About the nugget: Aren’t risks quite easy to locate if you know your business? So, do you actually have to go looking for them?! Yes and no, rather No and Yes. You are quite right in that if you know your project domain well (say, e-commerce software solutions), it would be easy for you to rattle off typical top risks in a new project in that domain. But your experience itself may blind side you. So, you have to look at the specifics of the new project and make sure your risk discovery is not unduly conditioned by your experience. The nugget offers advice on the typical areas that are often sources of risks. See also, the full playlist of Project Management nuggets.