Boost Positive Risks

Ronald is Adjunct Professor at the University of Houston College of Technology.

  Risk Management   Knowledge Shelf  

Introduction
Risks get a bum rap! Most people believe a project risk carries a negative connotation—meaning an adverse event or threat may occur. This common belief means you may be missing out on positive risks or opportunities that can potentially have a beneficial effect on your project’s deliverables and goals. When you have a positive risk (and most projects have inherent positive risks), you should not transfer or avoid it, but should either accept it as is, try to increase the probability and impact of it occurring, or share it so other groups can get the full benefit. The following are some examples of positive or good risks.

• Reducing your workload: If the project manager realizes that he or she probably needs fewer people for certain project tasks to be completed than originally planned, then this opens the door for an opportunity. The project manager should take the risk or responsibility of reducing the headcount to get more accuracy (for example, total costs and completion date) and credibility into the plan. This process could also be used for tasks that have positive slack. The updated project plan should be re-baselined, but should keep the original baseline for historical reasons. Going under budget should free up resources for other projects and could help to get better forecasts in future projects.
• Growing your business: Let’s say …

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