Risk Management: What Intuition Can Bring

Paul has run a plethora of projects in multiple industries throughout his 20-year career, ranging from process improvement to agile to most recently cyber-security. Paul is also a reputable speaker, drawing practical and humorous conclusions from the "trenches" of his employers. Paul's dedication as a PM practitioner started decades ago, when he became one of the first 10,000 people to earn the PMP.

  Risk Management  

If you have a long history of managing IT projects and a passion for project success, surely you know the importance of risk management. Think of the root causes of why IT projects are so prone to risk: new technologies, varying levels of experience in those technologies, legacies of systems too delicate to touch, bold customer demands and variation in vendor performance.

Any project manager who has been negatively affected by these will display passion and ferocity if these challenges start re-surfacing on the next project.  Indeed, it takes a few rounds with project management to fully appreciate the importance of risk management. The buildup of scar tissue from mid-project surprises becomes enough impetus for the senior PM to practice risk management.

Many of us are still in the building stages of our project management careers, and the call for risk management will first send the up-and-coming project manager to the textbooks and written standards to get familiar with it. “Risk Management 101” promotes an extensive methodology and process for identifying, categorizing, quantifying, prioritizing and monitoring risks. Larger projects performed in organizations with well-ingrained risk management processes will dedicate specialists and oversight to projects, such that abundant attention is paid to managing and…

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