Incorporating risk management

- Don't try this at home. We hear this a lot on action or experiment based TV programs. Why? Because the risks of harm are great. The average person should never try the skateboard tricks you see on TV. Projects, while not typically physically dangerous, should come with a warning like those TV programs. They come with risk. As a project manager, not a day goes by when I don't see something that could present a risk to my project.

My advice to you? Deal with risk thoroughly without it consuming every moment of your day. Here are a few survival tips to help you do this. First, use risk to prioritize what you do on a day-to-day basis. At the start of every day, prioritize your tasks. Seek to tackle the riskiest things first. For example, if you think that one of your vendors might miss a deadline, you should prioritize your time to visit with them to understand and examine your options if necessary.

If you think a risk is going to impact an implementation process, look at that process, assess it, and attempt to control it. Better yet, change the process to reduce the risk. Second, discuss risk openly with your sponsor. Ask what risks they think are important and determine what they think of your strategies to deal with risks. Ask for suggestions and garner their support. Third, make risks a regular topic at your status meetings. You should include your customers and your sponsor in these discussions.

Having regular, open, and frank discussions about risk will help you manage risk as a regular course of doing business. Finally, after each of these risk assessment discussions, create or update your overall risk plan. This plan details the risks you are managing and provides an ongoing means of reporting what actions you're taking and the status of each risk. Your vendor potentially being late would be added to your plan, if you didn't have one in there already.

The risk plan helps you ensure you're on top of what's going on with risk on your project. Working the plan proactively helps you be cool, calm, and collected in your risk management approach. I like to treat risk management as an everyday event and an essential part of keeping my projects on track. If you ignore the whole idea of risk management, you'll end up fighting fires and this is a tough way to spend your day. Fighting fires can have a negative impact on your schedule, your costs, and the quality of the products you deliver.

Not to mention the emotional drain it puts on your and your team. And you'll be so busy putting out the fires that any process improvement opportunities will be largely overlooked. If you look and act like you're in control of risk, then you'll have a better chance of getting other engaged in a sensible risk management approach. In addition, you'll help your management perceive you as a person with a balanced business approach to implementing your project and not engaging on those crazy skateboard stunts you'd only see on TV.