Anticlue

Planning and Managing Risk

A corporation's ability to plan their work and work their plan is the key difference between success and failure. If your enterprise doesn't understand the interdependent nature of departments, a component which can help bring a project in and deliver the benefits proposed is risk management.

There are areas of uncertainty to any project. Items to consider are:

1. Requirements: What exactly is needed to be done? What is desired? Where is the stretch goal?
2. Usability: How will the application interact with the end users?
3. Change Management: How will the business process be transformed after live? How will everyone be prepared for these changes?
4. Resources: What skills will be available as the project proceeds? What environments will be available as the project proceeds? Will the project sponsor be available?
5. Management: Will management be able to establish a productive team, maintain morale, minimize turnover and coordinate a complicated set of interdependent tasks.
6. Supply Chain: Will resources perform to the level as desired? Are the resources available? IS there a consultant contract in case such an item is unavailable? Is the procurement process understood and repeatable?
7. Politics: What political gambits and power plays will trump reality and impose constraints which place project success in jeopardy?
8. Conflict: How do members of a diverse stakeholder community resolve their individual (silo) goals when essentially the goals are incompatible.
9. Innovation: How will technologies and approaches unique to this project affect the outcome?
10. Scale: Have projects of this breadth and volume been successful based on past performance.
So as a starting point, I have a project today, which is an individual goal of our chief medical officer. We are going to walk through a risk discovery process reviewing the area's of uncertainty and identify all risks, ascertain our project's level of exposure to the risks, and develop contingency plans for those risks where warranted.