Information Technology Project Management: Providing Measurable Organizational Value, Fourth Edition

CHAPTER 8

Managing Project Risk

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

Chapter 8 focuses on project risk management. After studying this chapter, you should understand and be able to:

• Describe the project risk management planning framework introduced in this chapter.
• Define risk identification and the causes, effects, and the integrative nature of project risks.
• Apply several qualitative and quantitative analysis techniques that can be used to prioritize and analyze various project risks.
• Describe the various risk strategies, such as insurance, avoidance, or mitigation.
• Describe risk monitoring and control.
• Describe risk evaluation in terms of how the entire risk management process should be evaluated in order to learn from experience and to identify best practices.

INTRODUCTION

In the last chapter you learned how to develop a baseline project plan. This project plan is based on a number of estimates that reflect our understanding of the current situation, the information available, and the assumptions we must make. The fact that we must estimate implies a degree of uncertainty in predicting the outcome of future events. Although no one can predict the future with 100 percent accuracy, having a solid foundation, in terms of processes, tools, and techniques, can increase our confidence in these estimates.

Unfortunately, things seldom go according to plan because the project must adapt to a dynamic ...