Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects

2. Risk Management Is Project Management for Adults

Team Leader:           We’re having a meeting about this tomorrow, but I think it will get worse.

Project Manager:     Don’t have the meeting.

This chapter of definitions pertinent to risk management begins with a definition (right in the title) of risk management itself: project management for adults.

This is not meant to be snide. (Okay, it’s meant to be a little snide, but there is also truth in it.) An almost-defining characteristic of adulthood is a willingness to confront the unpleasantness of life, from the niggling to the cataclysmic. A little child is excused from thinking about nuclear war, the rape of the environment, kidnapping, heartless exploitation, and rampant injustice. But ...