Tips and Techniques - November 2006
- Establishing A Risk Reserve
by Daniel Galorath - Making Sense of Stakeholder Mapping
by Ruth Murray-Webster & Peter Simon - How to Reduce Risk in Project Schedules and Portfolios
by Sarim Khan
Establishing A Risk Reserve
By Daniel Galorath
A Risk Reserve is the additional amount of time, money, or personnel required to fund mitigation activities that will take a program to successful completion. A risk reserve may be built into the estimates by setting the probability within parametric models. When the estimate is allocated to specific activities and elements of a project and the associated costs are accounted for and budgeted through the work breakdown structure, a reserve should be established to address potential problems.
The project manager should use a disciplined and comprehensive method to assess project risk in the estimate. Estimates of the required reserve should be defined and quantified throughout a project’s life cycle as specific risk elements that can be used to provide adequate risk reserves.
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About the Author:
Daniel Galorath
Daniel D. Galorath has over 35 years of experience in the software industry where he has solved a variety of management, costing, systems, and software problems, and performed all aspects of software development and management. Mr. Galorath is founder and president of Galorath Incorporated, maker of the SEER® suite of estimation tools. Mr. Galorath is one of the principal developers of the SEER-SEM™ Software Estimation Model. Mr. Galorath completed his undergraduate work and MBA from California State Universities. He is a member of the International Society of Parametric Analysis (ISPA), Society of Cost Estimation and Analysis (SCEA), IEEE, the International Function Point Users Group (IFPUG), and the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). He was honored with the Freiman Award, recognizing his long-term contributions to the field of parametric analysis. Mr. Galorath teaches courses in software cost, schedule, and risk analysis; software project management; software engineering; systems architecture, and other related topics. He has lectured internationally and is the author of many papers about software project management. Mr. Galorath can be reached at info@galorath.com. His website is www.galorath.com
Making Sense of Stakeholder Mapping
By Ruth Murray-Webster & Peter Simon
Editors note: This paper is reprinted by permission of Lucidus Consulting Limited. It first appeared in Lucid Thoughts, the newsletter of Lucidus Consulting, a change and project management consultancy based in the UK, in November 2005. It was also published in Project Manager Today in December 2005.
Considering and understanding stakeholders and then acting to engage them is generally agreed as being one of the most critical parts of any managed change initiative.
Initial consideration of stakeholders is often done using a technique based on some kind of stakeholder grid or map of which many versions exist. Some grids or maps are in one dimension for example showing stakeholders (individuals or groups) mapped against their area of interest in the project or programme. However, in our experience, most are in two dimensions where two axes are labelled with features of stakeholder status or behaviour and the area between the axes (the two dimensional grid) populated with the names of each individual or group.
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About the Authors:
Ruth Murray-Webster
Ruth Murray-Webster, APMP, PMP is managing partner at Lucidus Consulting Limited in the UK. She has over 20 years of experience as an organizational change facilitator, coach, consultant and manager. In her early career, she led significant organizational re-alignment programmes for ICI and Amersham International. For the past ten years, she has worked as an independent consultant, helping a wide range of clients with project, programme, quality, risk and change management solutions. Ruth is a Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) and PRINCE2 practitioner, and a full member of the Association of Project Management (APM), the Project Management Institute (PMI®), the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development, and the Institute of Quality Assurance. She holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Henley Management College. Ruth has a wealth of knowledge and experience, including international PM experience in China, Japan, Norway, Russia, the UK and the USA. She is co-author of the book ‘Understanding and Managing Risk Attitude’ which is now widely acclaimed as leading the way in helping to manage risk effectively. More information about Lucidus can be found at www.lucidusconsulting.com. Ruth Murray-Webster can be contacted at Ruth@LucidusConsulting.com.
Peter Simon
Peter Simon, FAPM, APMP, is managing partner at Lucidus Consulting Limited in the UK. He has nearly 30 years of experience as a project management consultant and practitioner across a wide range of industries and business sectors. In his early career he worked for a variety of organizations in the Oil & Gas, Transportation and Utilities sectors and was responsible for all aspects of project planning, control and risk management on projects in Europe, the Middle East and the USA. In his later career, he was successful in building up the PM consulting businesses for PMProfessional Group and ESI International. Peter was an elected member of Council for the Association of Project Management (APM) during 1998-2000 and is a former member of APM’s Executive and Professional boards. He was Chairman of the APM’s Risk SIG for four years, and was Project Manager and Managing Editor of the APM’s PRAM Guide published in October 1997. Peter is a co-developer of the APM’s Introductory Certificate and Practitioner Qualifications for project management, and has been highly involved in other APM certification programs. He is also a member of the Project Management Institute (PMI®) and is a Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) and PRINCE2 Practitioner. He is widely published and provides PM consulting support to a wide range of organizations. More information about Lucidus can be found at www.lucidusconsulting.com. Peter can be contacted at Peter@LucidusConsulting.com.
How to Reduce Risk in Project Schedules and Portfolios
By Sarim Khan
Even the best-planned projects go wrong: every project manager knows that. Unexpectedly, from leftfield, comes a curveball—leaving plans, budgets and timescales in tatters.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. ‘Unexpected’ isn’t the same as ‘unimaginable’, or ‘inconceivable’. For all too often, the things that go wrong in projects could have been foreseen as at least possibilities: in many projects, adverse factors such as bad weather, supplier unreliability and technical delays are ever-present dangers.
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About the Author:
Sarim Khan
Sarim Khan is CEO of PertMaster, a provider of risk and analytics software for Project Portfolio Management (PPM) environments, with a focus on oil & gas exploration, engineering, manufacturing, construction, aerospace, defence and governmental industries. Mr. Khan manages and holds responsibility for all aspects of PertMasters public business and technology strategies. He has over 12 years experience in the decision analytics software industry and has previously held management and executive positions at SPSS Inc., SAS Institute, Windmill Solutions and Jobpartners. Mr. Khan has worked closely with many Fortune 500 companies to better apply predictive risk and analytics solutions -- enabling clients to win and deliver profitable real-life projects. Sarim is a member of PMI and the Association of Project Management (APM) in the UK. He has lived in Dubai, UAE for the last 3 years, and holds a BSc (Management Sciences, Operational Research) from Lancaster University Management School, UK. Sarim can be reached at sarim@pertmaster.com
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