Enterprise Risk and Opportunity Management

Chapter 7Examples of the Use of EROM Results for Informing Risk Acceptance Decisions

7.1 Overview

The purpose of Chapter 7 is to demonstrate how EROM can help inform risk acceptance decisions at key decision points for programs and projects that serve multiple strategic objectives. Such objectives (and the associated performance requirements) may span multiple mission execution domains (e.g., safety, technical performance, cost, and schedule) as well as multiple government or other stakeholder priorities (e.g., tech transfer, equal opportunity, legal indemnity, and good public relations). Since the risks of not meeting the top-level program/project objectives may imply risks of not meeting the enterprise's strategic objectives, risk acceptance decisions at the program/project level have to include consideration of enterprise-wide risk and opportunity management.

Two demonstration examples are pursued for this topic. The first is based on the Department of Defense's Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program as it existed in an earlier time frame (about 14 years ago). In the time that has passed since then, a significant body of information about the GMD program has become available to the public through published reviews performed by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the DoD Inspector General (IG). The second is based on NASA's efforts to develop a commercial crew transportation system (CCTS) capability intended to transport astronauts to and from the International ...