Week 5/6 Risk Management

Last Week:

Leadership management

Leadership - persuasion 

Management - complexity 

Your styles and values that relate to how you would act as a product manager 

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Risk Management

Aims and Objectives:

-Probability and impact 

-How likely a risk is to happen 

-and the damage to the product 

-Understand risks in a product management environment and know how to plan for the risk (Plan B, C, D, Etc.)

-Evaluate risks and when they escalate

-Understand the risk register artefact

"An uncertain event or condition, that if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on the projects objective"                                                                                                                        (PMBOCK, 2017)

“(Exposure to) the possibility of loss, injury, or other adverse or unwelcome circumstance; a chance or situation involving such a possibility”                                                            (Oxford English Dictionary)

"any uncertainty that, if it occurred, would have an impact on one or more project objectives"                                                                                                                           (Association for Project Management)

Project Failure 

-Huge reputational damage 

-Very difficult to come back from as it says that you spent a lot of money to move nowhere 

-(Return on investment) is very important 

-Projects can fail when they are executed poorly

-Not being aware of all the assumed risks is signs of poor product management 

What is risk management?

Risk management is focused on 

anticipating issues and putting in place actions 

to reduce uncertainty to a tolerable level. 

Its all to understand what an issue is 

"An issues occurs when the tolerances of delegated work have been or will definitely be exceeded"

Tolerances

-Money 

-Risk 

-Resources/ Human/ Technological

Tolerances apply to everything and are important to understand the risks of the product at hand. 

Some PM are hands off as long as the tolerances are healthy. However, as soon as something happens that damages those tolerances they join in to the project to help mediate the risk present. 

Attribute of risk:

(Most of this, Apart from probability, will be on the exam)

 The FIVE domains of risk 

.Financial Risk

-Overbudget

.Market risk 

-Market changes frequently 

.Management risk 

-Decisions higher ups make that could effect the project 

-Like pulling a crucial member from your team 

-You are ok to push back 

.Team risk 

-Lots of personalities and egos/ people want to die on a hill

-A lot of teams don't operate well at the beginning 

.Supplier risk

-outsourced members or services around the world

-Trade off for quality and accessibility over saving money 

7 stages or risk Known by PMBOK

1. Plan risk management 

2. Identify risks

3. Perform qualitative risk analysis

4. Perform quantitative risk analysis 

5. Plan risk responses 

6. Implement risk responses

7. Monitor risk

Some common risks 

• Time (lack thereof) 

• Budget (lack thereof) 

• Resources (illness, absence, swapping) 

• Poor scope definitions (I.e., "must work across browsers, "must be scalable", "must have the 'wow' factor") 

• Client doesn't know what they want 

• Client thinks they know what they want 

• Market forces change (disruption, seismic event) 

• Not having all the details at the agreed kick-off point (scope ambiguity)

• Unknowns

Planning for risks / The risk register 

• Risk Register / Risk Log is an artefact from the PRINCE2 framework 

• The artefact is a Word / Excel document listing all of the identified risks in the project 

• The PM / Team discuss and log risks that could disrupt or kill the problem and identify who is responsible for the risk 

• The risk register is a ‘living’ (“evergreen”) document

Example:

Task /Sam's project:

-Identify the risks and mark them in red 

• Sam has been tasked to deliver a project using a piece of expensive hardware - a brand new type of server. 

-Technology that is brand new can be inconsistent and break easily 

• They have been told to instruct their dev team to design, develop and install a bespoke, high-quality piece of software onto the server and make it work for public consumption. 

-What does "High quality" actually mean/ subjective language

-This is a market risk, as they have to make it ready for public consumption meaning there can be no faults in the system

• The project team consists of Sam (PM), and two developers they've never worked with before - Charlie (a senior software engineer) and River, a junior but extremely talented graduate software engineer. 

-Risks in hierarchy as one is a senior and one is a junior, also they have not worked together before 

-Team risk/ Social dynamic of the team 

• The business case has been made that the service and prestige of completing this task would earn the company huge revenues in the future and raise the company profile on a global scale. 

-Loads of pressure brought upon the new team 

• Extra info: The CEO of the company has pre-empted your success and sent out a press release lauding the project's completion and innovation. 

-Another layer of pressure 

• They have 3 weeks to complete the task

-Not a lot of time given to the team