Elephant in the Room: Risk

Every project has risk. Acknowledging risk is to acknowledge the real potential for things to happen that could jeopardize a project. While there’s no such thing as a no-risk project, the first step to reducing risk is identifying it, then putting a plan (based on everyone's current awareness) in place to prevent it. When you can’t avoid it, you’ll need a plan to mitigate it. Assessing and planning for risk scenarios are key conversations necessary at the beginning of a project – and can be beneficial in defining all the pieces that may be a part of the project. Risk informs critical project decisions such as defining functionality, deadlines, budget, and appropriate stakeholders- all of which then sets healthy expectations. We’ll present exercises that we’ve found to be productive in this phase.

Talking about risk doesn’t have to mean a difficult conversation. It has a tendency to be negative, which can be a downer on an exciting new project. Risk is either ignored, shrugged off to the side as an inconvenience, or uncovered painfully along the way. It’s never invited, but risk always shows up to the party. Projects that kick off with insufficient acknowledgement of the risks they entail can quietly start to fail before the first deliverable.

In this session we will explore how to have an open, honest, and meaningful conversation about how to identify, prevent, and when necessary, mitigate risk. We’ll address how it can be a productive discussion, leading to further clarification that may even reduce the project’s risk overall.

Using modern project management processes and techniques, we’ll take a closer look at:

- The software development emotional cycle
- How to conduct a successful conversation about risk with project stakeholders.
- How to calculate the likelihood a risk will happen and how severe it could be.
- How risk assessments can help expose initial project assumptions, build project confidence, and secure buy in from internal and external stakeholders.
- Risk prevention and mitigation strategies for common situations such as migrations and upgrades. - How to use risk to estimate an accurate project budget.

Intended Audience: PMs, Client Services or anyone responsible for project success, including project stakeholders