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The Risks of Change
Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.
Projects are uncertain. Change on projects, however, is certain. The challenge for many project managers is dealing with the uncertainties and risks that projects offer when projects will change, and what the final outcome of the project will be is far from definite.
The dynamic nature of many projects means that requirements progressively evolve, and the detail and clarity of what will be produced and how it will be delivered only emerge as the project itself also evolves. Given this level of change, how does a project manager identify and deal with risks? What’s to keep us from throwing up our hands and walking away in frustration?
Risk management is an essential component of project management, but for many project managers is a source of frustration. When Donald Rumsfield talked about the fact that “there are things we don’t know we don’t know,” a nation was baffled, except for a chorus of project managers shouting “Yes! That’s it! Someone gets it!” at their TV sets.
But while we still can’t do much to manage the unknown unknowns, there is a great deal we can do about better managing risks overall--even on projects that are subject to significant change.
The most important consideration in minimizing uncertainty in any project is not to treat risk management as a single, isolated event. Evaluating, planning for and minimizing risks should be an ongoing, proactive …
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