Chapter

2

Planning for Risk Management

You can observe a lot just by watching.

—YOGI BERRA

Planning for risk involves paying attention. When we don’t watch, projects fail.

How many? One frequently quoted statistic is 75 percent. The primary source for this assertion goes back to a study done in 1994 by the Standish Group and documented in “The CHAOS Report.” There are reasons to be skeptical of this number, starting with the fact that if three of four projects actually did fail, there would probably be a lot fewer projects. What the Standish Group actually said in its study was that about a quarter of projects in the sample were cancelled before delivering a result. In addition to this, roughly half of the projects were “challenged,” producing ...

Get Identifying and Managing Project Risk, 3rd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.