与熊共舞-读后-个人总结 waltzing with bears

Summary of Waltzing with Bears

Wisdom Guo

Overview

This document introduces the basic conception of various activities during the Risk Management process. And also depicts the reasons why Risk Management is necessary and How to execute it.

Why need Risk Management?

Very Bad Consequence

There are a lot of reasons for this, but among them, the vital one is: If you don’t undertake the Risk Management (RM), the consequence of that one day risk is realized will be a disaster, even worse.

RM points out the indefinites directly and without any reservation, in some sense, it sounds like a little deviation from the positive attitudeà “I can do it!”
RM is just only going to outline all the indefinites on the table, and face them directly, and make team be ready before they are happened really.

Not take a risk, not gain a benefit.

Many companies are afraid to say so: I can’t do it within the deadline you just give me. Or, there are many problems during the process. Most of people want to hear this: I can do it! OK, no problem. In this way, most of the productions are delayed to deploy to client.

Maybe, some one will say: we shouldn’t pay extra resources on these items may not happen at all. But don’t you think about that once they are really happened, you will probably pay much more than that? So let’s start RM now.

Herein, we are not saying that handle all kinds of risks, no matter what the cost/consequence of it is. We will identify the core risks and vital risks, and the trivial risks which is not necessary to do RM at all.

We’ll talk about this later.

RM Basic Knowledge

Risk

Risk is the event which is potential to happen and once happened will cause bad consequence.

Risk Discovery

Risk Discovery is an activity to discovery all kinds of risk team can think out. Normally, there is a brainstorm to do this.

Risk Exposure Value

Risk Exposure Value means that once Risk is happened, how much cost it will cause.
The formula is:
Exposition Value = the possibility of concretion * the lost

Risk Concretion

Risk Concretion is a process that Risk is turning to be realized.

Risk Concretion Identifier

Risk Concretion Identifier is pointing to the identifiers to stand for the beginning of risk concretion. Every thing has its own signs before it’s really happened.

Risk Alleviation

Risk Alleviation is an activity to alleviate the consequence of risk. During the process of making Risk management plan, this activity should be included.

How to execute RM?

Core Risk

Some people will deal with some small risk but ignore the real core risk, because they don’t know how to handle the core risk. This is definitely incorrect. If you do so, as a result, you will be painful when the core risk is really happened.

So there are some Core Risks you must pay attention on:

The improper progress arrange

The changes of requirement

The changes of team member

The collapse of contract

The low productivity

Mostly, these five risks are very basic and vital for every project. If you were the Project Manager, you must pay more attention on them.

The improper progress arrange

Maybe, you never ask such a question when the project is failed.
Why we didn’t finish the project? The arrange seems to be too tight..etc.

Mostly, when you are receiving a project with improper progress arrange, you will think more about how to finish it in time by increasing overtime or adding more people. Maybe, you also should think about it’s an improper arrange, it will be a big risk, if you promise it.

The changes of requirement

No any project’s requirement will be static, not changeable. So there is always a risk of the changes of requirement. An experienced project manager will take care of this carefully and lay out a proper strategy to deal with and evaluate the request of change requirement.

We should shoot the moving target.

The changes of team member

It’s a very common phenomenon to see some people who have been working with you closely before today leave and jump to other company suddenly in IT industry.

Worse, maybe it’s the vital moment for the whole project and the leaving man is playing a vital role in the development, such as: core technique development.

You must keep your eyes on this situation closely. Of course, no one wants to any one to leave suddenly, but you must be ready for this by building the relevant backup for the necessary and important role.

The collapse of contract

Traditionally, most companies accept the client’s project hastily without more thinking about that if they’ve really understand what the client wants.

And contract doesn’t define the input data stream and output data stream at all, then team starts to implement it along with many indefiniteness.
Then client says that the production is not the one he wants, he won’t pay for it.

Then the contract is collapsed.

We shouldn’t cover the really important and indefinite area so as to get the project.

The low productivity

Many teams are eager to improve the productivity to save the resource to get more benefit. But please note this first:
A team’s productivity must be stable. If it’s high sometime and low sometime, then you will never know if the project is able to be done timely.

So be stable first, then improve based stable.

Gather Risk

Summarize the Problem of Former Project

Problems appeared yesterday may also appear today.

Please remember this, don’t ignore the problems appeared before and optimistically think that they won’t happen again.

So there is a special activity to review the risk you’ve met in the project after it’s done.

Risk Discovery Brainstorm

It’s a brainstorm meeting; client, team and other stake holders are invited to attend. And find a person to record the items found during the meeting. There is a host to control the flow of the meeting.

An activity to find the potential risks as much as possible

Made a Risk Management Plan

Evaluate the Risk

First, please evaluate the importance of risks found in the brainstorm and group them and identify the core risk.

An activity to group the risks

Next, give a unique identifier and proper name to every risk.

An activity to label the risk

Next, lay out all the risk concretion identifiers by discussion or brainstorm for every risk.

An activity to find concretion identifiers

Next, evaluate the cost of risk and its possibility to calculate its exposure value

An activity to calculate exposure value

Next, find the proper Risk Alleviation resolution for every risk.

An activity to build Alleviation resolutions

Finally, document all the records.

Note:
-There’re some risks which may be not your responsibility to handle them, please report to your supervisor. As to if they will handle them that are their own responsibilities.
- Use the risk diagram to show the definiteness, and risk diagram will give a reasonable evaluation to you to make the decision and do the RM.

Continuous RM

RM is a continuous process and not only started at the beginning and never do it again during the development.

We should keep our eyes on RM and monitor the process of development to discover new Risk and deal with the risk concretion.

RM is a continuous process.

Review after Project is Complete

It’s very important to summarize the data once the project is done because that the data will be the input for the next project.

Besides, we can also gather the real cost for every concreted risk to compare evaluation value with real value to improve our risk management process.

A Sample of Risk Diagram

N

N2

N1

X: Date

Y: Relative Possibility

Note:

N: the best cases, no any risk is happened, So Date N is the earliest date to finish the project.

N1: the most possible date to finish the project.

N2: the worst cases, all the risks are happened, So Date N2 is the earliest date to finish the project.

Generally, we set the date before N1 as our goal to chase. And set the date after N1 as our planning date to execute.
Planning schedule > Goal > N

Reference

[1] Waltzing with Bears.Tom DeMarco, Timothy Lister.[2004]
Wisdom Guo.