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

CHAPTER EIGHT

Risk Management Tools

Questions Addressed in Chapter 8

• Why should the structure of a project uncertainty repository be based on three dimensions of risk management?
• What commercial software packages are available for risk database management?
• How could automation make making errors more efficient?
• Why should the tail stop wagging the dog?
• Why is MS Excel still the best risk management software package?
• What is a detail specification for a do-it-yourself risk register?
• Why should we use commercial probabilistic Monte Carlo tools?

THIS CHAPTER EXAMINES REQUIREMENTS and specifications to select or develop adequate risk management tools. Unfortunately, the available software packages force project teams to use risk management tools that support specific realizations of risk management systems as they are understood by their producers. Hence, the number of risk management systems supported by corresponding tools is equal to the number of producers. Each producer is heavily involved in sales and marketing activities to promote its own version of a risk management system as the only right one. Due to the general immaturity of risk management as a discipline, many project teams and organizations fall prey to these sales and marketing activities.

This chapter describes general requirements from early-introduced organizational context and risk management process. This ...