This Focused Performance Weblog is a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective. TOC is noted for its applications in Project Management and Multi-Project Management (Critical Chain) and Operations Management (Drum-Buffer-Rope), as well as in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Change Management (TOC Thinking Processes). If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Monday, July 07, 2003
Risk Management (XP Style) -- From Laurent Bossavit, we get a nice summary of project risk management. It is putatively from an XP perspective, but it feels kind of universal to me, especially when he warns that...
"Risk management is like feedback. If you're not going to pay attention to it, you're wasting your time. More than once I've tried to adopt a risk-oriented approach to projects, only to have management react something like, "Oh, you think that's a risk. Well, thank you for telling us. We're happy to have had that risk reduced. Now proceed as before."
I've been know to say that risk management is not part of project management, but rather the other way around. Any effective approach to delivering on promises, be it based in XP for simple efforts or in Critical Chain for more complex, will be an exercise in risk management.
Laurent also had another piece recently, with the fancy name of "Expatation" and focused on the issue of "scope creep." Actually, what he was talking about there was also in the realm of project risk management, as many in that field like to try to convince us is that risks can be positive. However, I prefer to think of the question as one of "risk" and "opportunity" management. As Laurent points out, unmanaged opportunities can easily become "traps" -- risks that threaten the viability of project promises to customers and sponsors.
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