Ignore Risk at Your Own Peril
| Time and again I encounter problems on work quality that are easily mitigated. I learned from my colleagues recently they incurred losses due to sub-contracting work that were not thoroughly planned. How did that happen? Without the facts, the case may be attributed to the management of project quality & project risks which the project team may have neglected somewhat. A broad insight of that project: Incorporate Quality Project quality measures the effectiveness & efficiency of planned activities against common/acceptable benchmarks, best practices & standards. Quality is monitored to report progressively on developments, managed to keep things right, & controlled to deliver what was agreed/contracted. These are necessary quality processes performed throughout a project lifecycle. The project team/manager is expected to abide & see to that:
Their project suffered losses because the only quality process which they enforced (capable of) is to report on performance. That too in reporting superficially on ongoing task status & meeting task deadlines; in spite of established corporate quality policies of both contractor & customer. A prevalent practice which I observed, is that projects tend to focus on achieving stipulated terms, & to the letter at best. A common argument for this is that project management dynamics today are fluid. Quality hence is neither managed nor controlled — structurally. Ignoring quality i.e. planning for quality & driving quality processes, in itself is a huge risk. Plan for Risks Risk must be identified, analysed, monitored & controlled with risk responses pre-authorized (where applicable) & confidently put in place. This should be a process with its own framework for risk ownership, accountability, and which is as-much-as-possible independent of the project development framework. Similar to that commonly practiced for corporate QA. The reason being risk matters should be evaluated separately from reviewing, planning & tasking project activities. More so when the project framework is Agile where activities are planned & tasks are assigned as like in a single breath, with little evidence of work, & seemingly always on schedule with hardly any impediment. The least is to integrate risk & QA paperwork i.e. taking evidence that quality procedures & risk controls are effected. QA & risk management are key to ensuring the customer gets what was agreed and contracted. And the project team truly delivers what is expected. Their lessons learned:
Risk planning is inevitable. There should be minimum protocols to follow for each & every project undertaken. There is after all a universal risk management standard.
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