Comments on: Risk? What Risk?

By: Stephanie Barnes

Stephanie Barnes — Fri, 29 May 2009 03:00:59 +0000

Change the culture as a risk mitigation strategy? Changing culture takes years and a lot of time/money/effort/leadership/communication. Change the metrics, change how people are measured and rewarded and you will change their behaviours. You get what you measure/reward. Changing the metrics for a project is a lot easier to do that changing the culture of an organization.

By: Loyal Mealer

Loyal Mealer — Sat, 23 May 2009 20:35:33 +0000

I agree! Pandemics, terrorist attacks, gas shortages, bad ice storms…there are many forms of natural and man-made disasters that need to be considered when developing your risk mitigation plans. One excellent way to reduce the impact of such things is to develop and implement a telecommuting policy. Establish work-from-home standards and, if you don’t have people doing it regularly, you should practice doing it with your key personnel from all departments periodically.

Being able to work from anywhere, anytime is no longer something for the future, it is here now and easily done effectively. We all need to embrace and even encourage it as an excellent way to reduce risk from unpredictable events.

By: Project Management Tools & Techniques

Project Management Tools & Techniques — Sat, 23 May 2009 20:05:25 +0000

One trick for addressing risk is to front-load the project with the riskiest parts. For example, if you’re creating a high-cost, high-quality alternative to an existing product, your first step can be to see how many customers have the budget for a high cost. It’s easier with the low-cost alternative: see who will use a low-cost version for free, then figure out how to charge for it.

People tend to save the big news for last, but when they do that, the big news ends up being the bad news. It’s better to spend 10% of the cost on finding out you have to scrap a project than to spend 90% of the cost before realizing your cost estimate was really way too low.

By: Thomas Hunter

Thomas Hunter — Sat, 23 May 2009 14:26:06 +0000

Pandemic is something that can be managed. Now, global recession is something that all need to include within the profile. We have experienced two in the last 7 years. Oddly enough, the industry that helped “Get America Rolling” is the one that needs the help now.

Global recession is the answer to globilization. We all want to trade and profit from global operations, well the globe is a much more difficult beast to manage. We can not control hundreds of governments, cultures, or political parties.

By: Kimberly Wiefling

Kimberly Wiefling — Sat, 23 May 2009 13:56:55 +0000

Remember to put “pandemic” into your risk analysis. That’s one I missed when assessing the risks to my global consulting business. Oops! I guess I just don’t have a big enough imagination for disaster. – Kimberly in Osaka