Track: Risk and Resilience

Risk is a matter of perception; people perceive risk in different ways to each other. This may be an outcome of tradition, culture, habit, and way of thinking. People have a different attitude to the way that they perform risk management; some of them do it more than others or others do not do it at all, because is seen as unnecessary overhead. Human perception in the execution of the risk management process plays a vital role in the successful deployment of the process. Previous studies have shown that risk management is an essential tool for project management and could increase the chance of successfully meeting project objectives. In addition, risk management have been also seen as a tool of allowing the project team to communicate risk information for use in forecasting project outcome and to inform decision making towards balancing threats and opportunities. The aim of this research is to gain insights from academic and public perspectives about the perception of risk management in relation to project success.  As a general concept project success has received a considerable attention with the project management literature over the last three decades (IKA, 2009, Pinto & Slevin, 1988 cited in Mclead et al, 2012).   To date various traditional methods have been developed to investigate risk management and project success. This research is using data from social media and from an academic literature database. Hence, in order to investigate a large database of academic papers on project success, and reach reliable conclusions, this work deployed in the research methodology the use of machine learning algorithms. In particular, a novel bibliometric procedure developed in Plevris et al. (2017) was utilized to analyze the current work’s database. Then in order to identify different patterns and people opinion the research looked on public perception for risk management leveraging data derived from twitter and analysed using big data analytics techniques. The present study provides additional evidence with respect to the relation between risk management, project success and people’s perception.

PMI Talent Triangle: Technical

Forecasting project schedule and cost completion can be viewed as a mysterious art form. Successful forecasting requires first-hand knowledge of project scope, technical barriers, full awareness of staffing requirements, ability to see around corners, and solve problems before they become barriers to success.

Project and Portfolio risk management is an often overlooked component of the forecasting process. Risk is sometimes viewed as overly complex, contributing to a culture of avoiding or overlooking risk management.

In this session we will discuss:

1. Why companies avoid risk analysis and the consequences
2. Creating simple ways for resources to contribute to the overall risk picture
3. Using the right tools to process risk information
4. Concisely reporting risk hot spots
5. Actions to take based on risk reporting

During this session, Tom Polen will demonstrate how to counteract and avoid frequently cited objections to proper risk analysis, while illustrating methods for teams to participate in risk-based forecasting process with minimal time investment.

With realistic project plans, for which each project risk has been accounted for, individual and portfolio forecasts become more achievable. This in turn, fosters confidence in execution that is impossible to fake. When a team knows their plan, threats, opportunities, and acceleration strategies, they can predict their own destiny and contribute to overall business’ success.

PMI Talent Triangle: Technical Project Management