Identifying and Managing Project Risk, 2nd Edition

Chapter 10

Managing Project Risk

“Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.”—JOHN F. KENNEDY

It is rare to encounter a project where everyone involved feels things are adequately under control. There never seems to be enough time, funding and staffing seem too low, and there are generally a few technical challenges yet to figure out. Managing project-level risk involves understanding all of this well enough early in your work to set realistic project expectations and, if necessary, to negotiate at least minor changes to the project. Although completely dealing with project risks and issues is never possible, shifting things to minimize the worst problems may be sufficient. Once a project is seen to be feasible, hard ...