Practical Project Risk Management, 2nd Edition

FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITION

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new one.—Nicolo Machiavelli, 1532

Seneca (5 BC–65 AD) wrote that “the greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.” His insight ...