Managing Project Risk

There are business projects that run smoothly and according to plan, but many do not.

There is no such thing as a risk-free project. Managing Project Risk shows how with skill and good project management, the business odds can stack in your favor.

Issues examined include: the essence of project management ; defining risk; project budget; leadership, team, task and the individual; benchmarking; risk modelling for the 21st century; and project management technology.

Risk management should not be an afterthought. Use this book to ensure it's applied from the outset.

• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Gambling, risk and risk management
• Lady luck
• Our goals on risk
• How to use this book
• Managing project risk: opening to endgame
  

1. Objectives
• Risk in context
• Threat management
• Risk attitude and perspective
• Acceptable risk
• Gambling with your life
  
2. Business projects and risk
• What is a business project and what is project management?
• The business project cycle - old and new
• Limitations of the Classical Waterfall model
• Planning defects
  
• Prototyping
• Off-the-shelf versus bespoke products
  
• Fund-raising
• Implementation of a project
• Big bang
• Phased implementation
• The project team
  
• The essence of project management
• Project inertia
• Business risk conditions
  
3. Risk analysis
• Defining risk
• Impact
• Small business effect
• Large business effect
• Risk identification
• Risk quantification
  
• Measuring risk
• Assessments of types of business risk
  
• The Delphi group
• Sources of risk
• Political risk
• Country risk
• Market risk
• Currency risk
• Interest rate risk
• Counter-party risk
• Credit or default risk
• Operational risk
  
• Position-keeping or stock-keeping
• Project failure
• Business
• Budgetary
• Scheduling
• Technical
• Legal/regulatory
  
4. Risk management
• Project risk management in a nutshell
• Risks in the future
• Risks of the present
• Risks of the past
• Total risk
• Risk log
• Project steering
  
• The risk planning cycle
• Budgeting
• Cost estimation
  
• Project budget
• Top-down
• Bottom-up
• Cost control
• Resourcing
  
• Project termination
• Critical success factors for an IT project
  
5. The legal process and risk
• The value of a contract or law suit
• The contract
• Strikes and industrial action
• Project penalties
• Delays and underperformance
  
• Change management
• Documentation
  
• PRINCE 2
• Contingency management
• Succession
  
• Insurance
• Market exposure
  
6. Business roles in the project
• Project team members
• The project sponsor/client
• The project manager
• The sales and marketing executive
• The accountant
• The banker or financier
• The engineer or designer
• The lawyer
• The health and safety manager
• Government and regulatory agencies
• Agents and intermediaries
  
• Project risk management services on the market
• Assessing bids from outsourced contractors
• Consultants
  
• Project co-ordination committee
  
7. Operational risk management
• Insiders and corruption
• Buying investment funds or shares
  
• Leadership, team, task and the individual
• Screening project staff
  
• Risk management as a cultural issue
• The sales effort
• Introducing team risk awareness
• Building consensus and project focus
• Empowerment of the project team
• Review of the project team's results
  
• Project auditing/review
  
8. Quality assurance
• Introduction
• QA checking
• The invitation to tender process (ITT)
• A deeper look at a company's operations
• Forensic accounting
• Matrix evaluation in response to ITT
  
• Benchmarking
  
9. Finance in project risk management
• Cash flow
• Revenue protection using trade financing
  
• Derivatives
• Responsibility, risk and monitoring risk
• Lessons of derivatives trading
• Project accountability
• Chinese walls
• Practicalities of futures and options contracts for small firms
  
• The UK Private Finance Initiative
• Project ownership
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Take-over procedures for corporations
  
• The euro in business
  
10. Technology platforms in risk management
• Protection of intellectual property rights
• Standards and risk management toolkits
• Why standards?
  
• Project management toolkits
• Project management and IT platforms
  
• Practical projects and IT developments for SMEs
• The Internet
• Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and data warehousing
  
11. Risk management - a hard choice for a soft science
• Risk modelling and simulation
• Elementary risk modelling for computers
• 'Black box' risk management
• Deterministic versus Stochastic models
• Estimated monetary value
• Risk-adjusted discount rate
• Value at risk
• Multiple estimating risk analysis
  
• Scenario analysis
• Stress testing or sensitivity analysis
• Risk modelling for the 21st century
• Proper methodology and tools
• Summary of scheduling and budgeting
  
12. Summary
• Project leadership
• Project risk methodology
• Project management technology
• Conclusions
  

• Appendix 1 - Assignments
  
• Appendix 2 Further information
  

If Raftery's book is worthwhile to read, this one must be mandatory.