Managing Project Risks

Book excerpt: A comprehensive overview of project risk management, providing guidance on implementing and improving project risk management systems in organizations This book provides a comprehensive overview of project risk management. Besides offering an easy-to-follow, yet systematic approach to project risk management, it also introduces topics which have an important bearing on how risks are managed but which are generally not found in other books, including risk knowledge management, cultural risk-shaping, project complexity, political risks, and strategic risk management. Many new concepts about risk management are introduced. Diagrams and tables, together with project examples and case studies, illustrate the authors’ precepts and ideas. Each chapter in Managing Project Risks begins with an introduction to its topic and ends with a summary. The book starts by providing an understanding and overview of risk and continues with coverage of projects and project stakeholders. Ensuing chapters look at project risk management processes, contexts and risk drivers, identification, assessment and evaluation, response and treatment options, and risk monitoring and control. One chapter focuses entirely on risk knowledge management. Others explore the cultural shaping of risk, political risk in projects, computer applications, and more. The book finishes by examining the current state and potential future of project risk management. In essence, this book: Effectively communicates a conceptual and philosophical understanding of risk Establishes the nature of projects and the stakeholders involved in them Presents a systematic and logically progressive approach to the processes of project risk management Demonstrates how to recognize the drivers of project risks and the factors which shape them Emphasizes the importance of capturing and exploiting project risk knowledge Provides guidance about implementing and building (or improving) project risk management systems in organizations Managing Project Risks will benefit practitioners and students of project management across a wide range of industries and professions.