Treasure
Hunt, Part 3
Project and Risk
Management
The Problem: When a business decides to undertake a new endeavor — whether it’s designing a new internal training program, offering a new service, or creating a product for a client — that endeavor is called a project. It involves people, funding, resources, schedules, requirements, testing, fine tuning, and deployment, plus a host of other activities. Because of their dynamic nature, projects often experience understaffing, cost and schedule overruns, and unmet requirements. Yet many of these problems can be avoided with the right type of risk management.
Directions: For each item, select the answer that best describes your organization. At the end of each section, get your clues!
Section A:
| In this section, assess how well your company manages projects and risk. Each performance opportunity shown below has a range of possible responses. Your business may fall at a different point on the spectrum for each one. |
| Our projects tend to operate dynamically. We don’t second-guess our progress by trying to assess and manage risks. |
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Our projects and resources deserve careful planning, risk management, and oversight. Too much is at stake to do otherwise. |
| “Fire and forget” is our project motto. Once an effort is over, we quickly shift gears and move on. |
|
We continually benefit from our experiences by turning our “lessons learned” into “best practices.” |
| We roll out big projects by simply directing everyone to comply. We don’t waste time with “reality checks.” |
|
We perform pilot testing and roll out projects in phases to minimize the disruption to the business. |
Clues: Do the sentiments on the left or the right seem more familiar, based on what happens in your business? If you selected the right, your organization may be successfully avoiding expensive project failures!
Section B:
Next, ask yourself...What happens in your environment? Consider how your company embraces or avoids opportunities to manage projects and related risks.
| 1. |
Are projects often understaffed, underbid, or underscheduled? Is there typically a sense of unrealistic optimism about how long it will take, and how many resources will be required, to complete a project? |
| 2. |
Do projects kick off with little oversight or risk management? Do project managers assume the best possible outcome on every level, rather than heeding the maxim, "What can go wrong, will go wrong"? |
| 3. |
Does the project scope typically yield to requests for add-ons? Are requests for changes and bells and whistles honored blindly without ever requiring adjustments to schedules and budgets? |
| 4. |
Are large, costly, or risky projects rolled out without piloting? Are big changes implemented without testing them on a smaller scale? |
| 5. | Are “lessons learned” ignored instead of used for guidance? Does everyone forget what happened right after the project ends? |
Clues: If your answers tend to be “yes,” it indicates project and risk management issues may be throwing a monkey wrench into your business prosperity.
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