Beyond risk management assessing and managing program challenges

Abstract

Traditional, well-established risk management techniques are not always working. The evidence is well-known: Two of the most important and much anticipated commercial airplane development programs have recently suffered embarrassing delays in execution and delivery schedules. Airbus and its parent company EADS had to push A380s entry into service by 19 to 24 months. And Boeing has announced that its 787 Dreamliners delivery to customers will be delayed by at least a year. Clearly, these delays have significant consequences for the two companies and for the transportation industry. There is no doubt that both Airbus and Boeing are quite familiar with risk management techniques. So what happened? How could such experienced and well-managed companies fail so painfully in their main lines of business aircraft building? In this presentation we show that although the traditional techniques of project planning and risk management form the basic and necessary foundation for training project managers, they are insufficient to deal effectively with todays dynamic, risky, and changing projects. Project managers of complex programs must go beyond the classical techniques. We present four myths in the traditional approach to project risk management and contrast them with the realities of modern project management. We suggest that the risk management framework should be expanded to assess, not just what can go wrong, but also how can we get it right and how long will it take. We will offer practical guidelines on how to make this work by assessing both the risk and the challenge in each project.