How to Manage Project Opportunity and Risk

Abstract

This re-titled and extensively revised book builds on the success of an established classic text. It also builds on more than thirty five years of successful consulting practice, addressing practical situations that range from major offshore oil development projects to projects limited to replacing a domestic bathroom floor covering. It synthesises this practical experience with a very broad relevant literature. The target audience includes board level senior managers responsible for project, programme and project portfolio aspects of corporate policy, and their integration with corporate strategy and operations. It includes those charged with implementing projects at all levels, including uncertainty, opportunity and risk management professionals. And it includes aspiring members of these groups. It shows why current project risk management practice, and related enterprise risk management practice, starts in the wrong place, pursues an inappropriate set of goals, uses the wrong tools, and fails to deliver what is needed. This book goes beyond current project risk management orthodoxy in a number of ways. One is the use of an ‘uncertainty management’ perspective which transforms the scope of opportunities to enhance corporate performance, a central theme. A second is a ‘whole asset lifecycle’ perspective on all aspects of change management. A third is a holistic integration of quantitative and qualitative uncertainty management processes which clarify opportunity and risk recognising the subjective issues involved. A fourth is showing how uncertainty management and the rest of project management can be integrated, and all aspects of corporate uncertainty, opportunity and risk management can be integrated. It shows how surprisingly simple approaches can lead to surprisingly powerful insights and results – used in the right place. It also shows why some impressively sophisticated and costly approaches involving common practice tools can create confusion and divert management effort away from what really matters. Uncertainty management as described in this book is a process driven approach using concepts and tools which replace many common practice risk management ideas. They can be used to make better decisions with less cost, realising more opportunities for less effort, and taking less risk for more reward, to transform corporate performance