Unknown - Unknown Risks

One example of unknown unknowns, or unexpected or unforeseeable program conditions, was the enterprise-wide firing and consolidation of multiple Chief Information Officer (CIO) positions at my organization. Several CIOs were key stakeholders and enthusiastic supporters of the program I was managing. Our program leadership, myself included, had to navigate the new landscape of "executive stakeholders" to build support for our efforts. We had to take additional steps to communicate the benefits of the program and to gain trust of the new CIOs. In the end, the impact on the project team was minimal.

I faced a U-U Risk when new tool was introduced (which was not in the plan earlier). This impacted the plan itself. In such situation you have re-design the plan and it might impact (+/-ve) you deliverables.

There were payment delays from a new customer in our last project. Our planned cash flow was not working and we were required more finance to run the project. It required a lot of effort to use the management reserves, also finance was not available all the time. It increased our financing cost and delay in our schedule due to lot of internal approvals.

I've encountered minor delays due to the impact of hurricanes, Mississippi valley flooding, and snowstorms. These were of the one week variety, and the projects were of relatively long duration (> 3 months), but depending on the timing, it could have had a bigger impact on the schedule than it did. And we did have a very short warning horizon of 1-2 days for each, which helped us with some pro-active planning rather than being 100% reactive.

Note that a one week delay due to such events could have a greater impact on short projects or sprints.

Unknown unknown risks arise when the subject is not known, for example little experience in a particular topic, and research and innovation projects where new roads will travel to other things and achieve results.