Project Risk Management: Essential Methods for Project Teams and Decision Makers

CHAPTER FIVE

Risk Assessment and Addressing

Questions Addressed in Chapter 5

• What kind of measuring tool is required to assess uncertainties?
• What is the anatomy of a good RAM?
• Do we assess probability of a random event or possibility to discover a premeditated broiler black swan plot?
• Do we ask the right questions?
• Why did Italian geophysicists go to prison?
• What are five fundamental uncertainty addressing strategies?
• What is an addressed uncertainty?
• What are the roles of monsters, pets, diamonds-in-the-rough, and fine diamonds in risk management?
• What does a do-it-yourself risk register look like?
• What does PETRA mean and how should it be used for addressing?
• What is the role of bias?

IDENTIFIED UNCERTAIN EVENTS SHOULD BE properly managed to decrease the overall uncertainty of project outcome and chances of failure. To understand how damaging downside uncertainties could be and how favorable upside uncertainties should become, project teams need a measuring tool. It should be adequate but simple to use. That measuring tool should be used even before any attempt to manage uncertainties is undertaken. However, the tool is as good as our understanding of the nature of measured objects. The right questions about uncertainties should be asked to carry out adequate measurements of their probabilities and impacts on project objectives.

To make managing uncertainties more proactive ...