Risk Management and the hidden opportunities

We implement risk management to secure our project from possible issues only, right? If so, you are wrong!

Risk management and project control are indeed major defensive activities to secure our projects. But while we are busy avoiding the lost ground, we often miss out on great opportunities to gain ground. And losing opportunities is losing chances to maximize your project success, and accordingly losing business opportunities.

Risk Management & Human Nature

Humans are programmed (by society) to associate risk with bad things, and the word risk is used in casual conversation as it invariably has a negative implication and should be avoided whenever possible.  And project managers are trained to deal with positive risks. Yet, most of them ignore the possibility of benefits from a risk event.

However, to be a successful project manager, you need to deal with all project risks, threats and opportunities, as possible events in any project.

The Lost Opportunities

How many times have you heard about "lost opportunities"? Many times, right?

Most project managers develop plans to deal with threats, but few of them plan for opportunities. Dealing with threats is a mandatory activity in every project, but finding opportunities does not have this luxury; And project managers should plan to win these opportunities as the very essence of business survival and growth. So, how to implement a proper risk management process to avoid losing opportunities?

The risk management process and common opportunities

Risk is defined as an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on a project’s objective. Unfortunately, many managers do not understand the basics concepts of risk management. Therefore, they utilize the wrong techniques and approaches in managing their risks.

So, let’s go deeper in discovering the Risk Management Process by highlighting some of the hidden opportunities and how to respond to them.

The common opportunities

Apart from the successful delivery of the project, there are hidden opportunities that every manager and project team can take advantage of them. Below is a list of common-opportunities for most of the projects:

• Expending knowledge opportunities for the manager and the project team by learning and or training new things,
• maintaining and ensuring good relationships with the client and other stakeholders to create future opportunities,
• delivering high-quality projects (on time) to increase the company reputation,
• capturing lessons learned to identify project management process improvements to complete existing and future work, and more.

How to respond to an opportunity?

Identifying risk is the very essence of the risk management process to maximize the effects of positive ones (opportunities) and minimize or eliminate the negative ones (threats) of a project by implementing the right Risk Response Strategy.

The PMBOK® Guide 6th edition lists five risk response strategies for opportunities as follows:

• Escalate
• Exploit
• Share
• Enhance
• Accept

I will not go deep in describing those strategies, as they are beyond the scope of this article, and there are several techniques, processes, and standards recommended by other professional associations.

Offense Strategy VS. Defense Strategy

Maybe you heard in a soccer game where some coaches use a strategy that the best way to defend (Defense) is to attack (offence). Same in project management, if you want to secure your projects, you have to take advantage of all opportunities that support the project objectives and the business behind them.

Practically speaking, looking for opportunities that maximize team efficiency or minimize the project timeline will give you the advantage to deal with project issues and secure your project accordingly.

Conclusion

Due to the pessimistic nature of the team and the lack of risk management knowledge, people have a difficult time thinking of project opportunities. And without building a proper project management culture and knowledge at the organization & the team level, this barrier will persist and losing potential opportunities continue.