A recent (late 2010) “Linkedin” discussion started with: “I was at a live project manager networking event the other night and someone said, ‘Project Managers are Risk adverse by nature.’ Is risk adversion a quality of a successful project manager?” What are they really talking about? The discussion seems to conclude project managers are not anymore risk adverse or averse than any other person. What they do is manage their risk. I thought I would write this article about risk in projects, how risk is planned for (in the project plan) and how risk is managed during project implementation.
1. Definitions
Averse is an adjective meaning to have a strong feeling of opposition, antipathy, repugnance, etc. against something; opposed: He is averse to drinking and driving now.
Adverse is an adjective meaning :
- unfavorable or antagonistic in purpose or effect: adverse criticism.
- opposing one's interests or desire: adverse circumstances.
- being or acting in a contrary direction; opposed or opposing: adverse winds.
- opposite; confronting: the adverse page.
Isn’t the discussion a reflection of the fact that projects always have some level of risk involved because projects are one of a kind? Don’t projects range from those that are fairly predictable because they are at least similar to projects already completed to projects in which practically everything is unknown? A research and development project is likely to be considerably more uncertain than building a new house that is a copy of many that have been built before. Nevertheless the project manager for a house project still has to consider a number of uncertainties – will resources be on site when he needs them, will the weather behave nicely, will supplies arrive on time, what mistakes will be made, etc. etc. Risk is always present.
That risk is always present is nothing new; so why the discussion about project managers being risk adverse or risk averse? In the end it does not matter whether project managers are or are not – one way or another they must deal with risks. They are managers of risk (as is any other type of business manager) when project managers plan their project and later on during execution (unfortunately even a very good plan does not guarantee nothing will go wrong). Isn’t the most important part of the project manager’s job how he deals with (manages) uncertainty (Murphy) during execution? After all Murphy’s Law states that, “what can go wrong will go wrong.”
Part II follows shortly.
Technorati Tags: Project, Project Management, Risk Management, Project Manager, Project Plan, Prject Execution, Execution Management, TOC, Theory of Constraints, Critical Chain
Technorati Tags: Critical Chain, Execution Management, Project, Project Management, Project Manager, Project Plan, Risk Management, Theory of Constraints, TOC, Project Execution
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