Team Rally Speech

Managing Project Risk and Opportunities
Monitor, Leverage, and a bit of Respect By Patrick Darnell

Introduction

Now that Project X is in Early Start Mode because of inducements supporting fast delivery of the prototype, Project Risk Management must further its mission. There is a notion among stakeholders that massive amounts of substitutions have been made in critical areas of controls, especially wireless and fiber optics. Also, for security reasons military IT mesh network system of Project X does not align with standard, popular IT. Internet Technology and Engineering is backlogged with shop drawings, comparing them to specified units. The departments called in an army of temps to get back on target, by increasing hours using two shifts.

Manufactured piece parts ordered from Poland are on schedule but held up in special coating factories at Swedish plants in Romania. Stainless steel production is experiencing slow downs and shut downs in Eastern Europe. The manufacturers are renegotiating prices since the US dollar is plummeting, with two years to go in the Bush administration. Sounds like bad news? It isn’t because Project Risk Management Plan, PMP, saw those coming.

The test now is to winnow concurring risks that are waiting in the wings like villains who sweep in, to ruin the baking of the pie, putting their thumbs all in it. This is also not bad news because the Project Manager Office, PMO, has put together team monitoring and controlling processes to make early identification of unanticipated stumbling blocks falling from the ceilings.

Discussion: who monitors the Monitoring?

As will have been instilled in new Project Risk Team Managers, we will have an unusual opportunity to combine already learned processes of previous risk management parlays, with newer identification of enduring stalactites like risk-plagues common to all early-start projects. The key seems to be respect, as a proper spelunker knows; do not touch the conical hanging pillar hanging over your head; let it be. Two reasons for respectful delayed reaction:

· Each risk has a life cycle, like a project, and if disturbed too early or too late will likely end in disaster
· Latent Risk hanging over one’s head is what makes the project flourish, in other words is the prime motivation

It turns out “keeping track of identified risks, re-analyzing existing risks, monitoring trigger conditions for contingency plans, monitoring residual risks, reviewing and evaluating the effectiveness of risk responses” is ongoing by PMO reporting agents. And, make reports every shift changeover if possible. Reporting three times daily is very possible with wireless and radio frequency identification, RFID, and many other tactical Internet Technology, IT, based products.

The process is self iterate, according to Douglas B Boebinger, PMP, founder and President of Integrated Process Developers Inc, a project management and process re-engineering consultant and corporate trainer. After checking the overall plan to note if our response is clicking with core competency, and accepted standard mode of operation: ~Create workarounds, ~Control the project risks, and ~Refine and update the risk response plan.
This is very respectful spelunking when the risk, or stalactite, is worked around, and preserved for what it is, a relic, in a safe and controlled environment. This quarantine allows properly timed managing of latent risks.

Discussion: Iterative Teamwork

What then is the reaction that will seal the fortune of early start Project X in regards monitoring and processing of latent risk? First we discern external or internal root of incoming risks. From there we apply our guided “Risk Management Paradigm: Communicate ~ Identify ~ Analyze ~ Plan ~ Track ~ Control,” (Dorofee; Apr 97) and;
Implement an alternate strategy
· Execute a fallback strategy
· Modify the PMP
· Take corrective measures
· Update organizational process assets
· Puts lessons-learned in computer database for future use

Jump-starting the risk evaluation during tasks depends very much on the project management team and its reciprocal interdependence. Extreme teams can be formed where “ordinary people are called upon to achieve extraordinary results, and ...not be burned out when they are done” (Thompson; 2004).

In the 1990’s Mrs. Thompson points out that “134 separate project teams in 88 countries in the USA ...indicated that ‘despite positive indicators... overall results show companies [were] generally doing a poor job of team building’”(2004; p 72). Despite the team’s mission internal dynamics will be done in three phases:

• Task Analysis: what work needs to be done?
• People: how many people should be on the team?
• And, Relationships: What roles are implicitly negotiated among team members?” (2004; p 73)

Please, lead risk Management team members, oblige your self to remember to bring in other persons to your latent risk identification process, as it makes higher probable recognition of threats. Accomplish interpersonal work through well-planned facilitated group meetings, and individual interviews. Keep the I.D. process simply “known/ unknown, important/ unimportant, external/ internal, or predictable/ unpredictable” (CTUOnline Task Multimedia PPT; Dec 8, 2006)

Team Risk Management should keep the edge on and capture the vehemence of the project workers and sponsors to accomplish this prototype early finish. Remember to structure your interview questions to your best understanding of psychology of your guest, and to power of listening by you the interviewer. Allow the workers and teams to vent, and otherwise stay loose in the environment of the interviews and meetings. I trust you will all capture and document all that is to be discovered in your sessions. The interviewees are reaching into their past experiences in context of what’s happening now, to give you a glimpse of the next round of situations (Para, CTUOnline Task Multimedia PPT; Dec 8, 2006).

Conclusion

In conclusion the struggle upfront to instill risk management is beginning to pay off. When sponsors came in project management’s first meetings they wanted not much to do with the qualitative research needed to identify major risks. Yet, now that it has been done, and is ongoing done, almost everyone in the entire project from Poland to Thailand cannot wait to tout their latest brain-surge that identifies upon the horizon an incursive risk. At last we all know what it means to say, “We welcome the unwelcome intrusion with its usually unpleasant and damaging effects.”

References

CTUOnline Task Multimedia PPT; (Dec 8, 2006) questions and answers
CTUOnline, (October 2006) Task Detail, HRM345-0604A-05: Building Effective Teams
Boebinger, DOUGLAS B, PMP (Dec 2006) CTU Online, Risk Management Tricks of the Trade for Project Managers, Rita Mulcahy, PMP dbb process developers Integrated Process Developers Inc
Dorofee, Audrey J, Walker, Julie A, and Williams, Ray C; (Apr 97) Risk Management in Practice, SEI, Carnegie Mellon U, retrieved 12/7/2006
Thompson, Leigh L; (2004) Making the Team, a guide for Managers, Prentice / Pearson Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, second edition