Exposed!

As a senior program/project manager I spend most of my professional career in international program/project management, focusing on distributed projects in multi-cultural environments. People I work with recognize me for my ability to assess a situation quickly and define adequate and pragmatic actions to bring projects back on track. My style of management can be characterized as can-do, a pragmatic approach focusing on delivery.

 

The internet changes the world, while project results are required in shorter timeframes and need to meet constant changing technical environments. For the last three years in e-project management, it became apparent that a lot of my decisions were based on the risk in terms of exposure. Exposure becomes the third dimension in e-risk management, with likelihood and impact being the first two dimensions.

Changes Enforced by Internet
The most obvious change enforced by internet-based solutions is the increase of exposure of companies.

These days, the customer can choose between contacting a customer agent or to access the internal systems of the supplier/partner directly using the internet. The customer agent acts as a filter toward the customers. When the internal system is unavailable or the query results contain abnormalities, a modified message will be provided.

This filter is limited or not available for internet-based systems, introducing a new dimension of risk--exposure.

This article describes a way to incorporate this e-risk dimension with the traditional risk management methods.

Risk Management: The Traditional Approach
The diagram below depicts the standard risk approach for any project:

Risk management starts with the assessment. All risks are qualified in terms of likelihood and impact for classic projects, the first two dimensions. Based on the …

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