Damian PereraMonitoring & Evaluation Specialist| ChrysalisMellawagedara, Western Province, Sri Lanka
Projects can encounter unforeseen risks causing major delays and additional costs.
How can we identify and manage unforeseen risks in projects? Saving Changes...
Karthik RamamurthyAuthor, Say YES to Project Success| Founder KeyResultzChennai, Tamilnadu, Tamilnadu, India
Hi Damian! Thanks for posting this question which I've been asked many times by attendees of my PMP Prep programs.
By definition, an unforeseen risk is an "unknown unknown" since we neither know what the risk could be, nor whether it will occur during our project and impact it.
The deadly December 2004 Tsunami and the extreme European volcano eruption of a few years back are both prime examples.
Since there is no way to identify such events at the beginning of a project, the best way to constantly ask ourselves, at monthly review meetings, whether there are any recent happenings that can indicate a near-term catastrophic that could affect our project.
I sometimes joke in my PMP classes that the Project Manager should also be the CWO of a project -- Chief Worrying Officer!
While worrying does not always help in life, being a CWO helps you be proactve in terms of risks.
With no way of predicting such events, there is no contingency provided to "unknown unknowns." Instead, the financial impact of such events will be handled through the organizations Management Reserve. Saving Changes...
Drew CraigSr. Agile & Product Coach| VanguardPhiladelphia, Pa, United States
One of the reasons for contingency factors and reserves. Saving Changes...
Well one good approach is to start as early as possible. High level risks should be identified before the project even really begins (even before Planning), in the Project Charter or other similar initiation document. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Today unknown-unknown risk have dissapear from projects due to the amount of data and information outside there. As any other type of things in project management, mainly because risk management has a great component related to estimation, you need time to be aware of risk. So, the risk is not unknown-unknown. The risk is the lack of time to work on risk management. Taken the line of @Kiron few people know that one of the pillars of Agile is knowledge management. Knowledge is outside there. You have to have time to take the knowledge, mainly in the form of data, and transform it into information. Saving Changes...
Mark StewardDirector| Arrow Zee AustraliaSydney, Nsw, Australia
A good starting point can be the lessons learnt from previous projects, if your organisation has retained such information in its knowledge library Saving Changes...
Michael DelaneyPartner| Delaney Management LLCWest Chester, Pa, United States
Mark makes a good point in that previous projects are good source for potential risks. A review of the projects risk plans, issues logs etc can provide good insight into potential risks and preventive and resolution activity Saving Changes...
Guilherme CalobaProduction Engineer| PETROBRASRio De Janeiro, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
I think using lessons learned from previous projects, as well as an in-depth stakeholder analysis can help you identify those risks.
One tool I like to use is something called pre-mortem analysis, where you gather your team and tell them the project went terribly wrong. And they have to write down on post-its why it happened. It helped us adding some disruptive risks into the register, the really catastrophic ones!
hope it helps.
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1 reply by Keith Novak
Jan 09, 2019 6:00 PM
Keith Novak
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I have never heard of that one but I really like the idea!
I think using lessons learned from previous projects, as well as an in-depth stakeholder analysis can help you identify those risks.
One tool I like to use is something called pre-mortem analysis, where you gather your team and tell them the project went terribly wrong. And they have to write down on post-its why it happened. It helped us adding some disruptive risks into the register, the really catastrophic ones!
hope it helps.
I have never heard of that one but I really like the idea! Saving Changes...
"This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."
