This is a good question. Risk Management is tough because it is mostly negative and people don't like to focus on that aspect. One way to do it is to embed RM is to make sure you are connecting the Activity Owners with the Risk Owners and Risk Action Owners. They should report in project team meetings. Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
Unfortunately, risk management is not usually pervasive across the whole organization. In fact, it is often the domain of a few specialists.
At the very least, you need to get functional managers trained, then have them own specific risks. That ownership should drive a risk culture down the functional manager's organization. Saving Changes...
Eric VerzuhAuthor, Fast Forward MBA in Project Management| The Versatile CompanySeattle, Wa, United States
Risk management is one of the foundation project management activities, like scheduling and regular client communication. But you wouldn't know that by seeing how many teams regularly identify and monitor risks. We recommend two ways to reduce the barrier to regular risk management: 1) Ask people what they are worried about. In other words, take a little of the jargon out of risk identification. 2) Use a SharePoint list for tracking your risks. SharePoint is super-easy to use, and more functional than Excel or Word. I really like that it is easy to add time stamps to every monitoring activity that is added to the risk log. See an example of this here: http://tinyurl.com/j65jd6f Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Great comments above. You are talking about culture. Culture is the understanding people have from organizational policies which determines the way they behaive. So, this is the first are to work: what people understand. Second, what we do, is working on change the mind about risk is something bad, as Susan stated. Thrid, be carefull about what step inside risk management process you will work because different type of stakeholders have to be engaged. For example, is you use cuantitative method that is not for any type of stakehodlers as Stéphane stated. About metrics, in the organization I am working today, some metrics are related to different steps inside our risk management process. Saving Changes...
I would also like to add a good idea that was given in a training I attended recently on risk management. As PM's we like to use number to explain things, but numbers give people the wrong impression because they don't really think about what they mean. For example; what has a higher impact, 1 in 10 or 1 in 1000. Many folks see the larger number and immediately focus on that one when they should be looking at the 1 in 10. How we communicate is just as important as what we communicate. Saving Changes...
