Topic Teasers Vol. 75: Falling Down On Risks

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  Estimating   Risk Management  

We’re kind of loosey-goosey on risk assessment on the projects where I work. A colleague is sitting for the PMP^® exam and asked me about qualitative versus quantitative. I’m embarrassed to admit I can’t recall why the difference in the terms, but more importantly should I be using one or both on my current work? What’s the big deal?

A. If you are already certified and your projects are going well, there is no need to worry about risk assessment. These ways to evaluate risk are only for projects where public health or safety concerns are involved.

B. A rough consideration of “what could go wrong” is all that’s needed with most projects. If your projects fail to meet the time, cost or quality metrics over 79.6% of the time, you should use quantumtative assessment processes to try to find the issues.

C. Risk assessment is only mandatory on all projects that exceed a $1 million dollar budget or are being done for a governmental or international client. Regulations and your contract will both state qualitative and quantitative reports must be created.

D. For frequent small projects with standing teams that use internal resources and do little damage to the organization if they are slightly late, you may be able to get by with a very cursory consideration of project risks. But every…

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