Overcoming the Risk Fear Factor – Duran

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Do you get hives thinking about all the possible risks that could happen in your project? Are you overwhelmed by the prospect of dealing with all the things that could go wrong? Have you wondered how some Project Managers seem to remain calm when something interrupts their project?

As a project leader, the team is looking to you for direction. It’s important that you remain calm, take action and guide the team. This presentation will help you understand how to face the risks head on with a plan to put you in the driver’s seat.

All projects have risks: it could be internal or external, dreaded cost overruns or that rogue stakeholder disrupting the team or even major events such as the pandemic. The key to handling risks successfully is to be prepared by identifying possible risks, determining the impact of those risks, knowing the risk tolerance of your team, and ensuring you have a plan of action to respond to risks when they materialize.

PMI Talent Triangle: Technical Project Management

Project Elephants: How to talk about the big problems – Tkach

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Abstract: The session will be a hands-on tutorial on concrete steps to implement a risk workshop for complex projects. Our experience demonstrates that projects at any stage can benefit from a risk response workshop. These help draw out and openly discuss the large “elephants in the room” or seemly intractable challenges. Particularly, these are risks and issues that are too complex or ambiguous to address without facilitated conversations.

Participants will first learn how to pitch and set up a risk workshop. We will discuss the business case for getting management support and buy-in. Next we will discuss who should be engaged in a workshop, the best environmental conditions (location, timing and distraction reduction methods) and sample agendas.

During the implementation portion, participants will learn how to be an impartial but engaged facilitator. This will include:

Methods to identify key risks anonymously (so to draw out hidden concerns).
Pinpoint problematic situations (and their associated assumptions).
Collaboratively create solutions through engaging a broad set of project stakeholders.
Develop solution actions plans by naming responsible persons and check-in dates.

We will have many experiences to share with the audience. Especially those that identify methods and approaches that are effective at building engagement. We will also discuss what has not worked well.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation’s Integrated Program Management team has extensive experience in complex project risk assessment and response implementation. Our portfolio consists of large civil infrastructure and associated utility capacity improvement projects throughout the developing world on behalf of the US Government. The team is composed of project implementers that are now using their time to improve our program and project management practice throughout our funding stream.

PMI Talent Triangle: Leadership