Final †Project and Program Risk Management Essay

This type of management may take on an informal or formal approach, but risk management is essential for every project. Risk Management is not a well accepted standard practice since it points out negative aspects of projects, and there are numerous inhibitions that restrain the dynamics of risk management. According to the Wikipedia, a free web-based encyclopedia, the Project Management Institute (PMI) is a non-profit professional organization with the purpose of advancing the state-of-the-art of project management. The company is a professional association for the project management profession. The PMI sets standards, conducts research, and provides education and professional exchange opportunities designed to strengthen and further establish professionalism. The Project Management Institute, Inc. (PMI() has established a six-step set of processes and practices for the risk management process as documented below: 1. Risk Management Planning: project risk infrastructure is established and a project-specific risk management plan is generated. 2. Risk Identification: events with potentially positive and negative impacts are clearly described. 3. Risk Qualifications: risks are evaluated according to nonnumeric assessment protocols. 4. Risk Quantifications: risks are evaluated according to numeric assessment protocols. 5. Risk Response Planning: strategies to deal with or precluded risks are evaluated and communicated. 6. Risk Monitoring and control: risk management and response plans are put into action. b) Why do professionals mandate Risk Management? Professionals mandate Risk Management in organizations since risk sometimes becomes a secondary issue. This secondary issue occurs since the hope that Project Managers will be able to handle issues and problems as they occur. Since risk remains a secondary issue until an organization’s luck runs out or a profitable opportunity is missed, professionals take a more proactive approach to risk identification and mitigation by applying Risk Management Process and Practices. Based on statistical information, unfavorable risk events eventually occur in good projects without a way to identify and mitigate risk. The Project Manager suffers the repercussions of such type of failure; therefore, professionals mandate Risk Management and support its practices in effort to mitigate risk. . Explain the Delphi Technique and steps for effective application. a) Explain the Delphi Technique. When expert interview techniques are not an option, the Delphi Technique provides an alternate means for extracting information from subject matter experts (SMEs) without pressuring or forcing them to provide much needed information. Many SMEs prefer not to participate in data-gathering processes; therefore, the project manager ( facilitator) applies the Delphi technique to collect information directly from the SMEs without infringing on their schedules. This technique allows the facilitator with directed follow-up capability from experts after peers have been consulted so the highest quality of information is extracted from the experts. b) Steps for Effective Application. To obtain effective information from the Delphi Technique, the Project Manager must posses the ability to generate the original questions to present to the experts and to clarify the information from the experts as it is received. The following six (6) major steps will increase the chances of a successful technique application: 1) Identify experts and ensure their participation 2) Create the Delphi instrument 3) Have the experts respond on the instrument 4) Review and restate the responses 5) Gather the experts’ opinions and repeat 6) Distribute and apply the data The Delphi technique is a time-consuming process, but this technique is promising in extracting information from experts who might not otherwise contribute to a project’s body of knowledge. 3. Explain the Crawford Slip Method (CSM). The Crawford Slip Method (CSM) is a classic tool used to combat the negativism inherent in team members while attempting to identify risk and risk information-gathering for a particular product or process. CSM offers a variety of advantages over other information-gathering techniques, in particular, the ability to aggregate large volumes of information in a very short time period and the complete avoidance of groupthink. CSM is not the hardest risk management technique to apply when properly facilitated. A clearly established question is defined by the facilitator and provided to all qualified participants. The participants then document their response to the clearly established question on a slip of paper. Providing the same clearly established question to the participants again, they document their response to the question on a slip of paper again. This process is repeated ten (10) times using the same clearly established question to better extract all of the unknown information available from the participants involved in the product or process. The initial slips of paper are usually very similar in content; however, as the process repeats itself, the later slips of paper tend to generate identification of issues and risks that could have been overlooked without repetition. The strength of Crawford Slip Method is efficiency. 4. Define SWOT Analysis and their selection criteria. a) Define SWOT Analysis. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) Analysis Technique is a directed risk analysis that identifies risks and opportunities within a higher-level organizational context rather than a project’s narrow vacuum.