From the Inside Flap
As a project manager, you know that complicated projects are inherently risky business. Between time constraints, technical challenges, and resource difficulties, things that can go wrong often do—which is why one of the most important parts of your job is considering the possible risks involved at every point in the process.
Fully updated and consistent with the very latest Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), Identifying and Managing Project Risk takes you through every phase of a project, helping you guard against failure by improving and increasing your risk analysis capabilities.
The book outlines proven methods for project risk planning, drawing on real world situations and hundreds of examples—including what many once considered a truly impossible project, the Panama Canal—to demonstrate key ideas in the risk management process. You’ll learn how to use high level risk assessment tools, implement a complete system for monitoring and controlling projects, and properly document every possible consideration. The book contains sections on the different types of risk to consider when planning; how to identify key issues associated with project metrics; activity sequencing; Work Breakdown Structure (WBS); analysis of scale; and cost estimating and budgeting.
Identifying and Managing Project Risk outlines the essential concepts involved in project risk planning and provides indispensable details and advice on topics such as:
- -The benefits and uses of risk data
- -Setting limits and defining deliverables
- -Procurement planning and source selection
- -Constraint management and risk discovery
- -Quantitative and qualitative analysis
- -Project simulation and modeling
- And much more
Analyzing aspects such as available resources, project scope, and scheduling, this new edition also explores the growing area of Enterprise Risk Management as well as other important new developments in the field.
This valuable resource moves beyond risk management basics involving insurance, financial, and investment portfolio risk to examine areas like information technology, software engineering, product development, and other high tech fields, giving you a well-rounded understanding of what goes into making project risk identification a crucial element of project management strategy.
Your ability to identify and manage project risk is necessary for the smooth and successful completion of all projects, regardless of size, type, or scope. This book will help you eliminate surprises and transform risk into a variable you can manage and keep safely under control. Comprehensive and completely up-to-date, Identifying and Managing Project Risk helps you determine risk factors thoroughly and decisively…before a project gets derailed.
Tom Kendrick, PMP, is an internal project management consultant for Visa Inc. and the author of Results Without Authority. He has more than 30 years of project management experience, 12 of which were spent as a part of the Hewlett-Packard Project Management Initiative. He lives in San Carlos, California.
From the Back Cover
Fully updated and revised to reflect the latest Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), this essential resource provides clear-cut methods to implement at any organization and for any size or type of project. Identifying and Managing Project Risk takes you step-by-step through every phase of a project, providing real life examples and tips to illustrate key principles in project risk analysis.
Analyzing aspects such as available resources, project scope, and scheduling, the book shows you how to control and manage every risk. Featuring all new material on topics including the growing area of Enterprise Risk Management and more, Identifying and Managing Project Risk gives you everything you need to manage risk, helping to make the so-called “impossible project” a thing of the past.
ADVANCE Praise for THE SECOND EDITION OF IDENTIFYING AND MANAGING PROJECT RISK:
“Solid research . . . nailed key concepts regarding the identification and management of project risk . . . concise and entertaining. Kendrick provides the reader with the tools and techniques necessary for successful project management.”
— Charles W. Bosler Jr., CPCM, Founder and Chairman,
PMI, Risk Management Specific Interest Group;
President, Risk Services & Technology (RST) of Amherst, New Hampshire
“Tom Kendrick’s second edition of Identifying and Managing Project Risk is an absolute must for every serious project manager and student of risk management. Far more than just a review of the theory, Kendrick provides practical information and suggestions on how to apply risk management in the real world . . .
your world . . . and be successful.”
— Craig D. Peterson, PMP, President, PMI Risk Management Specific Interest Group; Lead General Systems Engineer, The MITRE Corporation
“This book is an excellent treatment of both project and risk management. Filled with practical insights and examples, it sets a new standard for useful project management/risk management books.” — Payson Hall, Manager, Catalysis Group, Inc.
About the Author
Tom Kendrick (San Carlos, CA) has more than 25 years of project management experience, twelve of which were spent as a part of the Hewlett-Packard Project Management Initiative.
Customer Reviews
Required reading for all project managers and sponsors
This volume may be the best one I have ever read on the subject of risk in the project arena. Kendrick has captured the best of current practical thinking on project risk and how to identify and manage it. And the author has carefully linked theory and practice to the Project Management Institute's "Project Mangement Body of Knowledge." In addition this book is exceedingly well written and very readable (a rarity in this genre).
Kendrick approaches risk identification from the perspective of the project manager in the areas of scope (project deliverables and product), resources (people, materials, and money), and schedule (time). He addresses each area in a separate chapter with practical advice on how to identify and document potential risks. An aspect of these three chapters I particularly appreciate is the depth of information that allows the reader to address each area of risk at different levels. Kendrick does this by providing an array of analytical tools. For example in Chapter 4, "Identifying Project Schedule Risks," the reader could use the list of common schedule risks and probably account for 80% of the schedule risks for their project, or move to a deeper analysis of risks associated with delays, dependencies, and errors in estimation. In the area of estimation the reader is presented with an array of estimating techniques that can be used as appropriate to detect potential risks in estimation.
Chapter seven on "Quantifying and Analyzing Activity Risk" appears just in time. After reading the first six chapters the reader may throw up their hands and declare "I can't manage all of this!" As an experienced project manager, Kendrick gives us tools to help select the risks to manage. All potential risks on a project are not manageable or worth the time and effort to manage. This chapter gives sage advice on how to select the vital few.
A key element in Kendrick's approach is distinguishing what he calls "activity risk" from "project risk." It is easy for the project manager to focus on risks associated with various activities and forget the larger picture. In fact there may be times when the risks associated with each activity seem minor but when the project is viewed as a whole the project is very risky. Kendrick provides tools for quantifying and analyzing risk at the project level as well as a chapter on managing project level risk.
I end this review with three overall comments. First, pages 17-24 should be required reading for all senior managers and anyone who sponsors a project and there should be a test at the end. The biggest risk for too many projects is unknowing, unthinking, or uncaring managers who are driven by near term profits and stock prices. Second, readers should not be put off by Kendrick's inclusion of statistical and mathematical information. Such information comprises less than 5% of this book and it would be a shame to miss the other 95% due to a fear and loathing of numbers. Finally, if you can't find any other reason to read this gem, read it for the intriguing history of the building of the Panama Canal. If Kendrick ever decides to stop managing projects, he has a bright future as a writer of interesting history.
In search of good books on managing project risks
This book provides an overview on how to manage certain types of project risks (some risks are not covered, e.g. financial) and, implicitly, only IT projects and not other types of projects (e.g. construction). Like many books on this topic, the treatment is uneven. The strengths are its logical structure and clear exposition. I knocked off 2 stars because a) there is a disconnect between the text (mostly IT-related) and case study (building of Panama Canal), and b) neglect of contractual issues, the key instrument of risk management. This is the book for you to read if you have no idea about project risk management.
Practical Risk Management
Reviewed by Al DeLucia
Director
Project Management Division
GSA, Philadelphia
Anyone who - like me -- has struggled to relate the abstract discussion of Risk Management in the PMBOK to actual project management practice will welcome this down-to-earth presentation. This book shows how to incorporate risk management into the planning of your project along the way - the entire way -- of the project development sequence.
Mr. Kendrick had many years of practical project management experience with Hewlett- Packard and headed their in-house project management training and consulting program. Over a period of 10 years, he trained hundreds of project managers at HP, in other organizations world-wide, and at the University of California at Berkeley and systematically collected information about the most significant risks they had encountered in their projects. The result is a database called PERIL (Project Experience Risk Information Library), that contains 222 projects sorted into risk categories based on type and impact. In this book, these results are integrated with the PMBOK processes of project development in a way that shows what project management is really all about.
Anecdotes from the construction of the Panama Canal are interestingly presented at the ends of the chapters. These describe how the concepts of each chapter were applied - or not - first by the French in their failed attempt to build the canal, and then by the Americans in their successful endeavor under the sponsorship of Teddy Roosevelt.
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