Cowards die many times before their death. They have played out all possible scenarios that could lead to a catastrophe. Today’s managers need to think like cowards for their projects. They need to look at all possible scenarios that could lead the project to failure. Project management is not a war but it is surviving your project and making it see the light of the day, with available resources and minimum damage.
Risk is best defined as the potential to suffer a loss. Risk management is described as a collection of methods and techniques which are designed to ensure that a project, company, or an organization is guarded against these risks to the maximum. While it is impossible to be prepared for every single problem that may come, there is a group of key risks that most organizations should protect themselves against.
At Tavant, risk management is one of the most crucial aspects of project management. Projects are vulnerable to many threats – both external and internal. The objective of risk management is to identify these threats and work out a strategy to eliminate, minimize, avoid, or transfer. A well laid out risk management plan not only helps deliver project on time, but also impacts the budget and quality in a positive way, and not to forget the team is happier and motivated as they don’t have to get into fire-fighting mode.
Risk assessment entails mathematics, philosophy, individual personality, and perception. When you begin dealing with risk assessment, we consider three things: (a) impossible, (b) possible, and (c) real.
The issue of risk assessment involves things which are very possible. The possible can be thought of as a thing which can occur but has not yet occurred, and what is the probability of it occurring. This assessment is qualitative risk assessment. The quantitative risk analysis is designed to get numerical data which is related to the probability that a particular risk and its consequences will occur.
Risk realized is called an issue; and what better way to handle an issue, if your risk planning already has a strategy to handle the potential risk (which now has become an issue).
You can never be too careful. However, projects, companies, and organizations need to define the threshold of their risk appetite.
There is nothing wrong in being pessimistic and paranoid about things going wrong in a project, but just being pessimistic is not sufficient. It is imperative that you layout a plan and strategy to counter them all and run the project optimistically. The reality is what you will see on daily basis.
