Potential Risks Of Project Management Process

We are going to discuss the in-built risk of some of processes in project management processes defined in PMBOK.

No matter how structured and robust framework available for project management , at the end it is human who is going to execute and we can make mistake.

Let’s explore what are the potential risk associated with processes:

     

     Potential Risk: Missing stakeholder

• Any missing stakeholder could cause a negative impact on project .Any missed likely to be find later     and when identified they may ask for change and this could cause delay
• Wrong Classification of stakeholder on influence/power/interest matrix. This matrix is used to evaluate how to manage communication with stakeholders and a wrong interpretation will lead to a weak communication plan and right message will not reach to right person in right time. There could be hundreds of stakeholder and this matrix is very useful in planning strategy on dealing individually or grouping.

 

      Potential Risk: Stakeholder Expectation Management

• Every stakeholder need one’s requirement to be implemented & Scope creep.  One of the most complex part of project management is managing stakeholder’s expectation. Everyone    wants to have his/her requirement to implement. PM need to balance all requirement from all stakeholder on basis on business case , project charter and prioritization.

      

      Potential Risk: Project Duration Computation

• Padding is extra time allocated and cost added as sufficient information is not available for estimation .It means there are many unknown region which can cause unknown risk and this increase uncertainties. With many padded estimates , you will lose stakeholder confidence and no one going to trust on schedule developed on such estimation.

    

      Potential Risk: Near Critical Path activities

• Need to monitor activities of all work packages of critical path & near critical path. More the activities closer to critical path , more the risk to project .A Project manager need to monitor near-critical path activities as for something happens and a near-critical can become critical.If identified late such scenarios and apply Schedule compression tools Fast Tracking & Crashing which has risk of rework and cost respectively.

     

   
Potential Risk: Project Cost accuracy

•  For better accuracy , estimate should be based on WBS and the person who is going to execute .          Two most important cost to consider are as:
•    Cost-Of-Quality  : Cost of quality planning of overall project
•    Reserve    : It includes cost needed to manage all risks (know & unknown risk) of  project

      

Potential Risk: People with wrong skill set,      Motivation

• Hiring of right people with right competency is the first sign of project success. Every work package  may need some specific skill set to accomplish the activities.People with not sufficient skill set will cause less productivity in turn timeline can be delayed.
•  Keeping team motivated is very complex as every person has different attitude and behavior.There is need to have a plan for team building activities ,reward & recognition system and conflict management in place to mitigate these risk.

REFERENCES :

• All cartoons are from http://web.inter.nl.net/users/pwilkins/
• PMBOK 4th Edition
• Rita's 6 Edn PMP Exam book
• Head First PMP