Overview:
The Challenge
Project issues can threaten our critical projects by draining the project team of needed focus, resources and time. This not only puts project delivery at risk, but also jeopardizes any strategies that depend on those projects. Experience has shown us that proactive management of project threats can reduce the incidence and severity of issues by up to 90%, but this only happens when we develop an effective risk management approach and receive the funding required to carry it out.
The Solution
This course explains how to effectively manage risk in major projects. It moves beyond the standard project management curriculum by diving deeply into effective risk management concepts and practices. Threats and opportunities are examined separately, and techniques are presented that allow management of both. Participants use a professional risk management tool, the Comprehensive Risk Register, to carry out a series of exercises each of which contributes to establishment of an effective Risk Management Practice. As participants build proactive and contingency responses, they simultaneously measure the reduction of overall project risk exposure that results. Learning Objectives include presentation of the following:
- The origins of risk
- An appreciation of risk's dual nature: threat and opportunity
- Managing risk at three levels: project, business and business value
- Building a useful risk matrix
- Developing a Risk Management Plan
- Introduction to the Comprehensive Risk Register
- Full characterization of project threats and opportunities
- Managing threats
- Threat identification
- Screening threats with qualitative analysis
- Estimating impact on the project: cost, time and labor hours
- Developing proactive response plans
- Assessing residual and secondary risk
- Creating contingency plans
- Managing opportunity
- Two kinds of project opportunities
- Identifying and qualifying opportunities
- Creating proactive response plans: leveraging project opportunities
- Measuring overall risk exposure
- How to calculate a contingency reserve
- Making the case to fund management of project risk
Audience:
This advanced project management course will be of interest to anyone who wants to control the cost of risk in major projects, including Project Managers, Managers of Project Mangers, Functional Managers and Executives with project responsibility, Project Management Office staff, Risk Managers, and Risk Management Office staff.
Prerequisites:
This course assumes familiarity with basic project management concepts as well as some experience in the planning and execution of projects.
Course duration:
3 days
Course Outline:
Section 1: Introduction
- Personal Risk Profile
- Our relationship with risk
- Origin of project risk
- Project success factors
- The risk management value proposition
Section 2: Basic Concepts
- The Standard Risk Model
- Threat and opportunity
- Relationship between issues and risks
- Risk at three levels: project, business and business value
- Impact of risk on project plans
- The work of Risk Management
- Risk Management timing
Section 3: Planning for Risk Management
- Planning for Risk Management
- Identifying risk stakeholders
- Risk tolerance
- Involving stakeholders in risk management
- Proactive vs. reactive risk planning
- Developing a Risk Management Plan
Section 4: Risk Identification
- Sources of risk
- Tools for risk identification
- Composing a risk statement
- Introduction to the Comprehensive Risk Register
- Full characterization of project threats and opportunities
Section 5: Risk Analysis
- Primary risk characteristics: impact, probability and visibility
- Building a useful risk matrix
- Risk analysis data
- Establishing risk scores
- Risk ranking
- Heat Maps
- Risk triggers
- Determining root cause
Section 6: Identifying and Analyzing Threats
- Threat identification
- Screening threats with qualitative analysis
- Threat prioritization
- Extended analysis: risk categorization, timing, urgency
- Quantitative methods: Estimating impact on cost, time and labor hours
- Unavoidable costs
- Measuring risk exposure
Section 7: Risk Response Planning
- Proactive and reactive responses to Threats
- Cost effectiveness of response plans
- Assessing and managing secondary and residual risk
- Creating contingency plans
- Building a Contingency Reserve
- The budget for managing threats
- Threat Management Overview
Section 8: Understanding Opportunity
- Value of opportunity
- Standard Risk Model
- What we believe about opportunity
- Beliefs versus behaviors
- Two kinds of opportunity
- Examples of overt opportunity
- Why opportunities are missed
- Enhanced model of risk
Section 9: Identifying and Analyzing Opportunity
- Tools for finding opportunity
- Screening opportunities with qualitative analysis
- Opportunity prioritization
- Quantitative methods: Impact on cost, time and labor hours
- Including opportunity in measurement of risk exposure
Section 10: Opportunity Response Planning
- Proactive and reactive responses to Opportunities
- Cost effectiveness of response plans
- Assessing and managing secondary and residual risk
- Creating contingency plans
- Building a Contingency Reserve
- The budget for managing opportunities
- Opportunity Management Overview
Section 11: Risk Monitoring and Control
- Monitoring threats and opportunities
- Updating the Risk Register
- Responding to risk events
- Reporting risk status
- Tracking reserves
- Controlling risk to Business Value
- Risk audits
Wrap-Up Discussion
Learning Approach
- A highly experienced instructor will use interactive lecture format, numerous hands-on exercises, team activities, group discussions and other techniques to drive home the essential points of this material.
- We will build on your prior experience in this topic, while providing you with a structure and vocabulary to use in future projects.
- If you have modest risk management knowledge, you will find that the clarity of the material and direct presentation style of the instructor will make the subject matter easy to understand.
- Participants learn how to use a professional risk management tool, the Comprehensive Risk Register
- You will receive a Participant Guide which will help you follow the material, take notes and retain what you learned so that you can apply it on your job.
- Participants in onsite classes are encouraged to focus all risk management exercises on actual, current projects. When this is done, project work is accomplished while participants learn.
Why should I take this course?
- Advanced Risk Management presents a comprehensive approach for the management of risk in major projects. When done effectively, risk management can prevent cost overruns and delays.
- Participants are shown how to build a business case for funding key risk management activities.
- The course includes a practical approach to uncovering and leveraging opportunities, a topic virtually untouched in standard project management training. Take home a whole new set of tools and techniques.
- Take this course and learn what you can do to ensure that your projects proactively manage threats and take best advantage of opportunities.
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