It amazes me how often I see comments on the web that illustrates the lack of understanding or importance of managing Project risks. The majority of posts I’ve read suggest that looking at risks is an after thought and little benefit is realized by the project team. I’d be lying if I stated that I had never experienced this, on the contrary the majority of Projects I had worked on up until 2000 were expected to run in this way. Raising Risks would require management response, ownership or accountability and were encouraged to be discussed but no action plans produced.

It was not until the dot com bubble burst and outsourcing became the norm that we had to collaborate with project teams of different cultures and located cross multiple timezones. The challenge has always been incorporating risks into the project and continuously identifying additional threats AND opportunities as the project progresses. Project teams should be encouraged to be part of the process and not just a management chore. But, how do we actually encourage that within a rigid corporate culture? We could instill that within the Project or Program Management Office, who are probably already aware or are used to produce their own spreadsheets or custom tools to track project risks. My take is that this top down approach will only work if teams and stakeholders actually found value and saw benefit. For example, what if the application identified potential risks with little or no involvement from the team? Some tools already do this, but it seems we all have to be Risk Managers or Analysts and mathematicians at heart, great if you like maths! but if we are to successfully manage global project risks it will take much more than just spreadsheets, Project Teams will need to change and embrace new risk management tools and concepts. I’ll leave that thought with you until my next posting

I’ve spent the last few months evaluating how companies manage project risks and the tools that they use (if any) to communicate risk exposure and plans on how to handle that. One of the biggest obstacles seem to be a corporations failure to ensure that project teams identify risks early on and continuously re-evaluate that during the entire project lifecycle. Its a bit like the left hand is not in synch with what the right hand is doing with different groups not communicating and no clear PMO practices in place. An experienced or well trained Project Manager knows how important it is to identify, manage and control risks, but what about those that are not certified or new to the role?

As projects and teams become more complex and global in nature the need for centralized, collaborative risk management tools is even more critical. Those that do not embrace this change will be left behind to those that companies that welcome and thrive on change. Now where’s my coffee?