Reccently I heard Project Manager speaking: “What is the hidden value in Project Management? Is it delivering your MS Project schedule on time?”
No, he said, hidden value in Project Management is Risk Management.
This is totally true. If you want to be productive Project Management you have to see what bad could happen before it actually happen. The faster you see it the more time you have to prevent it (someone could say that you have more time to worry about it but that’s not the point ;).
My friend often says me that if something bad is possible to happen you should treat it as if it is sure to happened, even as if it already has happened! What is the logic in that? The costs of dealing with such “obstacle” is much smaller if you focus on preventing that, rather in fixing. You should also be sure that everyone - sponsors, team members, clients, etc. knows as early as possible about possible threat. This should buy you support while preventing it to happen. I think the hard thing is to present the threads to your clients. Sometimes you are told not to talk about such things as incompetence, indolescence, money shortage, politics and so on…
The topic is deep and I could talk about it for hours but I learned that my work is mostly about risk management.
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