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“Can you name the ultimate project management four-letter word? You guessed it: R-I-S-K. This word is uttered in complete confidence or under the breath as something the project manager wished he or she knew something more about.” So begins Kim Heldman’s very informative book Risk Management, published by Harbor Light Press.
Risk Management is a how-to book, packed with practical examples and case studies. Rather than advise the project manager to identify the risks, it describes in detail how to develop a comprehensive list of risks and provides long lists of common and not-so-common risks that might be present. The text is supplemented by helpful templates reproduced in the Appendix or available at www.harborlightpress.com.
After defining risk management, the author proceeds in a logical manner through such topics as “Identifying and documenting risks”, “Analyzing and prioritizing risks”, “Defining risk response plans”, and “Implementing and monitoring risk response plans”.
Particularly helpful are the “notes” and “tips” Kim Heldman inserts throughout the book. For example, a note in the chapter on “Analyzing and prioritizing risks” asserts: “The risk of not determining probability and impact of the project risk events has a high probability (80 percent by my scales) of biting your project in the backside.”
As the introduction explains: “If you’re serious about increasing your chances for an on-time, on-budget project, you should read this book.”
“Churchill faced the challenges that many business organizations face today. In June 1940, he was facing a dire situation. Not only did he have to stave off an imminent threat, but he had to quickly turn a disjointed peacetime economy around, unify it, put it on a war footing so that it could sustain total economic warfare, and direct its output into immediate military use…The solution was a breakthrough in the use information-management concepts and led to the birth of the electronic computing age. What Churchill achieved was central to an adaptive enterprise.”
Arguing that the adapted concepts espoused by Churchill were no different than those required to succeed in today’s competitive business environment, Mark Kozak-Holland draws from Britain’s experience in the early 1940’s to exemplify the steps to building an adaptive enterprise. The result is a Churchill’s Adaptive Enterprise – Lessons for Business Today a fascinating book in the author’s Lessons from History series published by Multi-Media Publications.
Mark Kozak-Holland conceived the idea for this book when he was visiting the Cabinet War Rooms in London, England. He was struck by the way the operations center was organized to manage information for decision-making and control all the available resources, from the supply chain to the response systems. In essence, it was a precursor to today’s adaptive enterprise.
Churchill’s Adaptive Enterprise – Lessons for Business Today combines well-researched history with practical advice for organization leaders and IT professionals. It provides flow charts, tables and other useful templates for people seeking to transform their organizations, illustratively populated with the data Churchill’s war planners would undoubtedly have entered.
The book is logically organized into eight chapters, following a standard project methodology, from defining the problem to deploying the solution. The historical narrative is woven into each chapter, highlighting how to evaluate business situations and determine the right solution for a specific organization. Each chapter concludes with a summary of best practices.
If you are looking for clear directions for breathing new agility into your organization, and enjoy history, this is the perfect instruction manual. By drawing his examples from the Britain's legendary wartime leader, Mark Kozak-Holland not only brings the theoretical concepts to life but also provides compelling evidence of the timeless nature of the principles he espouses.
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