The Business Case for Project Risk Management

About this White Paper

I wrote the first version of this white paper in 2008.  I’d just delivered a talk on risk management and was looking for some way that I could help members of the audience cost justify their expenditure on risk management training and workshops.

The problem many people in the audience had was that, although they bought into the idea that good risk management has a massive return on investment, they found it difficult to convince their peers and bosses.  Each time they tried to hold a workshop or get their people trained they’d be told that there was “no money available” or that “there was simply too much going on to take a few days out to train people”.

In my view the lack of money was a direct result of too much money being spent on failing projects.  The lack of time? Same reason.  Too much failure going on to invest in success.

In this white paper you’ll see that good risk management affects more than just the project team.  Pretty much everyone stands to benefit: customers, key project stakeholders, software development teams, testers, people on second- and third line support and in computer operations, finance, sales and marketing.  Pretty much your whole company.  Your competitors won’t like it, but then they’re not supposed to.

This risk management white paper is free for you to download (registration required).

Summary

The UK now spends more than £22Bn each year on IT projects.  Most of these will be late or over budget and many will be cancelled before completion.  For each project that fails there are people working as hard as they can and as well as they can.  The thing that keeps them awake at night is the knowledge that, at the end of the day, the culmination of all this effort will be yet another project failure.

If, like me, you’ve ever lost out on promotion, or received a smaller bonus than you deserved, or missed an important family event because of a failing or failed project, then what I have to say is something that you have to hear.

Other Risk Management White Papers in this series:

The Business Case For Project Risk Management

This briefing paper for senior managers spells out the benefits of improving your company’s project risk management skills.  This White Paper was published in March 2010

Are You Making These Risk Management Mistakes?

This talk was delivered at the Association for Project Management’s KnowledgeShare 2010 event in May 2010.  It identifies the top people, process and communication mistakes that cripple most projects and outlines a successful formula for dealing with them.