Identifying and Managing Project Risk, 3rd Edition

 

Introduction

Your mission, Jim, should you decide to accept it …

So began every episode of the classic TV series Mission: Impossible, and what followed chronicled the execution of that week’s impossible mission. The missions were seldom literally impossible, though; careful planning, staffing, and use of the (seemingly unlimited) budget resulted in a satisfactory conclusion just before the deadline—the final commercial.

Today’s projects should also probably arrive on a tape that “will self-destruct in five seconds.” Compared with project work done in the past, current projects are more time constrained, pose greater technical challenges, and rarely seem to have enough resources. All of this leads to increased project risk—culminating too often ...