Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
The Risk vs. Reward Tradeoff
Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.
Project managers hate risks. By definition, they are uncertain--and uncertainty is difficult to manage. Risks are always there, lurking in the background, waiting to upset the best laid project plan. This hatred of risks is a good thing--it encourages PMs to conduct comprehensive risk identification and analysis to ensure that the risks are identified and assessed fully, and then implement appropriate management plans to reduce the likelihood of them occurring, the impact if they do occur, or both. Additionally, it drives PMs to identify contingency plans that can be implemented if the risks do occur--thus minimizing the disruption to the project.
But is this always a good thing? When projects are established, there is a lot of focus on budgets, schedules and scope (and the relationships between those constraints), but in this article I would like to argue that there should be more conscious focus on the role that risks play in that equation.
Risk and the triple constraint
When we conduct risk management, one of the areas that we focus on is the prioritization of risks by a combination of likelihood of occurring and impact if they occur (and perhaps the ease with which they can be managed). Based on this prioritization, we then determine which risks will be actively managed and which ones will be passively monitored.
But what drives this decision about where we…
Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.
ADVERTISEMENTS
|
"It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons." - Douglas Adams |