Chapter 1

Why Project Risk Management?

“Those who cannot remember the pastare condemned to repeat it.”—GEORGE SANTAYANA

Far too many technical projects retrace the shortcomings and errors of earlier work. Projects that successfully avoid such pitfalls are often viewed as “lucky,” but there is usually more to it than that.

The Doomed Project

All projects involve risk. There is always at least some level of uncertainty in a project’s outcome, regardless of what the Microsoft Project Gantt chart on the wall seems to imply. High-tech projects are particularly risky, for a number of reasons. First, technical projects are highly varied. These projects have unique aspects and objectives that significantly differ from previous work, and the environment ...

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