Running Effective Risk Meetings (Without Putting People to Sleep)

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Communications Management   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   Risk Management   Talent Management  

When a project is running full steam, everyone is busy treading water and keeping the work on track. The last thing anyone wants to talk about are risks; they are too busy with issues that are happening right now to even think about issues that may or may not ever happen. Chances are good that if you do get the appropriate people in a room to talk about risks, then their eyes are going to glaze over and most of them are going to be checking e-mails during the meeting. When you start talking about qualitative and quantitative analysis, you may even hear snoring from the corner (those are the resources that are overloaded, by the way).

Managing risks is an important part of managing a project. Risks that are not mitigated correctly can derail the project entirely. Risk analysis may not be everyone’s favorite subject to discuss over lunch, but if they are left unchecked, the project and the project team will suffer. This is something that project managers and quality managers understand. Unfortunately, resources working in the trenches on the project are not always well versed on risks and risk management, yet they are the ones who can discuss the intricacies of a risk and what needs to be done to mitigate it. A regularly scheduled risk meeting can help keep risks managed properly. It is the project manager’s job to bring the resources to the table and help them…

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