Risk

By Kuntal Thakore • December 21st, 2009

As a member of PM PM SIG group, I recently attended breakfast session on Using Mind Maps for Risk Management.  The presentation was good. It would have been even better if presenter’s brand new laptop worked to display his slides/Mind Map templates. We ended up spending quite a bit of time out of an hour [...]

How a team feels impacts its productivity and business results.  Imagine if the acrobat above was having a bad day… the results would be disastrous!
A key ingredient that shapes team effectiveness is its culture and having a sense of community.
Geography plays a huge role in shaping culture. Communities that live together use a common language, [...]

Two of the keynote speakers at the PMI Risk Symposium provided insights into how different risks change in priority over a product lifecycle (Esteri Hinman) and how effective risk management encourages poor risk management (Payson Hall).
Risks change over a product lifecycle
Esteri Hinman PMP (from Intel) presented that there are different functional groups involved over [...]

The approach to Risk Management can also be used for Opportunity Management by using a different point of view.

Another highlight (IMHO) of the Risk Symposium was Eldon F. Jones’ presentation on “Risk Register – What is it and How is it used?”
What is a Risk Register?
A Risk Register is a document that lists “all identified risks, including description, cause, probability of occurring, impact(s) on objectives, proposed responses, owners, and current status” per Mr. [...]

Having just attended the well-attended PMI Risk Symposium a couple of weeks ago, this topic is so appropriate for our current economic environment.  Many of you are doing some type of Risk Management already.  What I hope to do is to provoke your thoughts that could help increase your project or program success.
There were SO [...]

With the kick-off of Project Conference 2009 in Phoenix, AZ this week Microsoft has invited some customers and partners to get a sneak peek at Microsoft Project 2010.  I have been managing projects and teaching classes on this tool for quite a long time and have had a chance to read about some of the [...]

My esteemed colleague Natalie Udo’s post a few weeks ago, “What is a Project Manager?” started me thinking about what are the elements which make us successful in the business. And hopefully, I’m reinforcing Kimberly Wiefling’s recent posts on what are the keys to success as a project leader… and not being too redundant – Thanks, [...]

I am very avid diver here in the cold California waters. If at all possible I dive every weekend. Diving is not an extremely dangerous sport, however, decisions I make before, during and after the dive form the foundation of mine and my buddies safety and survival every dive. Making a good decision relies heavily [...]

Have you thought about the environment in your projects? Yes, even if you have NO wind turbines, solar cells, or cars that run on used french-fry oil in your project. Have you? Well, consider this posting as a start.

My first two guest posts were about the intersection of Knowledge Management and Project Management; in this post I would like to talk about what I think are some of the peculiarities of Knowledge Management projects.
For the most part Knowledge Management projects are just like any other projects, tasks have to be delineated, risk managed, [...]

It had all the earmarks of a disaster, a real career-sinker of a project. And here was my old friend and former colleague calling me up enthusiastically, on the phone: “Hey Lisa, we need a Technical Project Manager for this start-up I’m working for, in Redwood Shores… you’ll love the project and the team. It’s [...]

After years of managing online products and projects, you’d think it would become old hat… but never, not for this gal. There’s always something new to learn, and a different twist on old scenarios, if you’re open to them. People and team dynamics are endlessly fascinating, and you never know how it’s going to go [...]

I’d like to start things off in this posting with a joke I heard on the US Television show, Two and a Half Men. Now keep in mind that the show is full of gratuitous innuendo and juvenile comedy, much of it not easily translatable in (nor suitable for) the context of project management.  In [...]

Every program manager has run into the same situation at some point in their career. You put together your program plan with lots of spreadsheets, Gantt charts, requirements documents, resource requirements, risk management plan, etc. You present the plan to management and everything goes reasonably well until you start to talk about risks and how [...]

I believe that most people in the computer-using community (which now is just about everybody in the developed nations) want to do the right thing, and can do the right thing. They just need to know what the right things are, and how to do them.

Administrative controls are perhaps most important, because they most directly impact your people. On the one hand, they are the simplest, since all it takes is education. On the other hand, education about the hazards of smoking or the possibility that having sex causes pregnancy hasn’t done much to change behaviors in those realms. Well, rather than throw up our hands and give up, let’s tackle administrative controls anyhow…

There is a lot to talk about with regard to technical security controls, aka the “sexy stuff” like firewalls and IDS. So rather than bore you with technobabble (in Scrappy Information Security, I start with packets, headers, ports & MACs as a way of introducing how the Internet works), I will instead focus on an explanation of encryption.

We’re adults, and we like to know “why.” I would like to share some of the whys of information security, so that you can understand why the infosec guys can be so darned stubborn.

I’m sure you’ve all heard that old saying, “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.” That adage applies just as well to project managers where ‘bold’ equals ‘risk-taking’.  I’m also sure you’ve all attended at least one management pep talk about taking risks (if so, you may [...]

One often-used lament I hear on projects and in project management classes is, “No one here wants to deal with realistic schedules and budgets.”   Interestingly, there seems to be two perspectives on this phenomenon…
First, from the “worker bee” perspective, there is a sense that “management” always “discounts” the estimates.
Second, from the “management” perspective, there is [...]