You are a collaborator!
Depending on the context this could be a compliment or an insult. During the second world war the Nazi’s used local government leaders to help them impose their brutal regime on conquered countries. The most infamous of these is Vidkun Quisling from Norway. His name has now become synonymous with a sell out who betrays his own people. This is not the type of collaboration we seek in today’s interactive and dynamic workplace.
Was Carl von Clausewitz the First Risk Practitioner?
Most likely, we would not think about Carl von Clausewitz the way we would think about a modern risk practitioner. But he certainly had a risk practitioner’s mindset.
The Risk of Not Risking, and The Risk of Risking Blind
Think it’s a complete waste of resources, time and energy to perform a Monte Carlo Risk Analysis on your project? You might be right…
The Truth about CPM Risk Models
Let’s work through this together paragraph by paragraph and see if we agree. If you are involved in project management then you are familiar with critical path schedules. If you are not involved in project management and you are reading this then, hi Mom.
New Year’s Resolutions That All Planners Should Add To Their List!
As the nights grow long and the days grow short, let’s take a moment to contemplate some New Year’s resolutions for all planners.
Active Quantitative Probabilistic Risk Project Management
If you have been among the millions following my blog for the past few years, you know that I’m a fan of a disciplined approach to both qualitative and quantitative risk analysis as a tool to manage schedule and budget risk in project management.
Most often, risk analysis is seen as a tool used at the start of a project to gauge schedule and cost risk, or to assess the potential downside in a failing project. It is very helpful in these scenarios.
Truth Tables and the Construction of Quantitative Risk Models
I gained a great deal of knowledge during my college years, which is as it should be. In a Philosophy Logic class, I learned about truth tables and fell in love with them. Ludwig Wittgenstein is often credited with their invention. Ludwig himself was an interesting character. I read a great biography of the man years back, called Wittgenstein’s Poker. He is not a person one would want to share a dorm room with. But I digress…
The Role of Probabilistic Modeling in Schedule Risk Analysis
One of the more fascinating elements of history is the way in which individual humans can influence its course and change the future. For instance, where would the world be today if Winston Churchill had not stood so indomitably – and virtually alone against Hitler and Nazism? One person can impact the whole of humanity from one point in time forward. Another such contributor to the progress of humanity was Thomas Bayes. Bayes, the father of Bayesian analysis., lived in England in the 1700’s. It was his forward thinking that brought us probabilistic stochastic modeling.
Quality is the biggest risk in Construction Project Management
What if you have carefully planned a project, and skillfully designed its construction, but your contractor does not have the capability to perform the work in a quality manner? That is a risk to your project. The PMI diagram only used to refer to the elements of time, cost and scope. However, as of late, quality has also been included in the triangle.
In an IT project, poor quality usually manifests itself in the software crashing or producing unreliable output. In construction, the project creates a physical object – a building, a bridge, or a subway tunnel – so the risk posed by low quality is much greater than in projects that create intangibles, such as business process transformation or software. When construction fails, people may die. On the news, we hear about developing countries where buildings collapse and hundreds or thousands die, but construction quality problems resulting in loss of life are not limited to the developing world. I’ve been involved in the aftermath of two fatal construction quality problems during my career, and both were well-funded, professional construction projects in the United States. While no devastating consequences come close to death and injury in terms of quality problems, there is at least one other that has devastating impacts on both cost and schedule: re-work. Read More
Organizational Risk Tolerance in Project Management
As project managers, one of the important roles we have is assessing and managing risk for our projects. But risk assessment cannot be performed in a vacuum. The organization, customer, or end user needs to have a voice in how much risk should be tolerated.
Take, for instance, the NASA-manned space flight. It involves risks to human life which can’t be completely mitigated. On the other hand, many construction and engineering firms take a zero risk approach to human life and safety on their jobs. Jacobs Engineering goes “beyond zero” in their approach to safety risks.
It’s interesting to think about the potential for conflicting safety standards within a project. What if a beyond zero safety organization is performing project management for a firm that does not consider safety to be a priority? The customer may see the money being spent to ensure safety as an unwanted cost, while the project management firm will consider these costs essential to their ability to perform work for their client.
Let’s move from health and safety risk to schedule risk. In this case, the same potential for conflict arises if the owner and the PM don’t agree on what is tolerable schedule risk for the project. But in this case, it is possible to use statistical modeling and forecasting to examine the probability of certain completion dates.
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