Risk and Opportunity Management

There was discussion awhile back on New Grange about the risk and opportunity management. The conversation went around the topic of managing risk and managing opportunity using the same concepts.

One approach is to look through guides to the topic before deciding how to approach the issue. Here is a starting point that may prevent the approach of "having to make things up as we go."

• Abramson, R.L. and Book, S.A., The Aerospace Corporation “A Quantification Structure For Assessing Risk-Impact Drivers,” paper submitted to the 24th Annual DoD Cost Symposium, Leesburg, VA, 5-7 September 1990.
• Ayyub, Bilal M., Risk Analysis in Engineering and Economics, Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2003.
• Boehm, Barry W. “IEEE Tutorial: Software R/OM.” Washington, D.C., IEEE Computer Society Press, 1989. (See pp. 115–147 for overview of the R/OM process applied to software)
• Carnegie Mellon University/Software Engineering Institute. “A Systems Engineering Capability Maturity Model, Version 1.1,” (SECMM-95-01), November 1995.
• Carnegie Mellon University/Software Engineering Institute. “Software Acquisition R/OM Key Process Areas (KPA)—A Guidebook, Version 0.02,” (CMU/SEI-97-HB-002), April 3, 1997.
• Carr, Marvin J.; Konda, Suresh L.; Monarch, Ira; Ulrich, F. Carol; Walker, Clay F. “Taxonomy-Based Risk Identification,” Software Engineering Institute Technical Report, CMU/SEI-93-TR-6, June 1993.
• Charette, Robert N. Software Engineering Risk Analysis and Management, McGraw-Hill, 1989.
• Charette, R., Adams, K., White, M., “Managing Risk in Software Maintenance,” IEEE Software, May/June 1997.
• Dorofee, A., Walker, J., Alberts, C., Higuera, R., Murphy, R., and Williams, R. “Continuous R/OM Guidebook,” Carnegie Mellon University/Software Engineering Institute, 1996.
• Dorofee, A., Walker, J., and Williams, R. “R/OM in Practice,” Crosstalk: The Journal of Defense Software Engineering, Volume 10, number 4, April 1997.
• Gaffney, John,  How to Estimate Software Project  Schedules, chapter in Software Engineering Project Management, edited by Richard Thayer, IEEE Computer Society Press, 2000.
• Gaffney, J., et al. The Software Measurement Guidebook: chapter 13, Integrated Example and chapter 8, How To Estimate Software Cost, International Thomson Computer Press, 1995.
• Higuera, Ronald P.; Dorofee, Audrey J.; Walker, Julie A.; Williams, Ray C. “Team R/OM: A New Model for Customer-Supplier Relationships,” (SEI Special Report, CMU/SEI-94-SR-5) July 1994.
• Kirkpatrick, Robert J.; Walker, Julie A.; Firth, Robert. “Software Development R/OM: An SEI Appraisal,” Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pa., (CMU/SEI-92-REV), Software Engineering Institute Technical Review, 1992.
• Software Productivity Consortium. “Evolutionary Spiral Process Model Guidebook,” SPC-91076-MC, Version 03.00.05, December 1993. (See Vol. 1, Section 4, and Vol. 2, Appendix C–Risk Identification Questionnaire.).
• Software Productivity Consortium. “Evolutionary Spiral Process Training Course For Managers,” SPC-91088-MC, Version 04.00.02 Topic 4, Analyze Risks, pages 4-1 through 4-48 (May 1994).
• Williams, R., Walker, J., and Dorofee, A. “Putting R/OM into Practice,” IEEE Software, May/June 1997.
• Barkley, Bruce T. Project Risk Management.
• Chapman, Chris & Ward, Stephen. Managing Project Risk and Uncertainty.
• Chapman, Chris & Ward, Stephen. Project Risk Management: Processes, Techniques, and Insights.
• Frame, J. Davidson. Managing Risk in Organizations.
• Grey, Stephen. Practical Risk Assessment for Project Management.
• Hillson, David. Effective Opportunity Management for Projects: Exploiting Positive Risk.
• Kendrick, Tom. Identifying and Managing Project Risk.
• Mulcahy, Rita. Risk Management: Tricks of the Trade for Project Managers.
• Pritchard, Carl L. Risk Management: Concepts and Guidance.
• Schuyler, John. Risk and Decision Analysis in Projects.
• Smith, Preston G. & Merritt, Guy M. Proactive Risk Management: Controlling Uncertainty in Product Development.
• Vose, David. Risk Analysis: A Quantitative Guide.
• Wideman, R. Max. Project and Program Risk Management.

The Real Point

The point of listing these materials (and they're just the tip of the iceberg) is there is a wealth of information on this topic - and almost any other Project Management topic - in the public domain. The tendency is to use only what is "gospel" from the offical outlet - PMI is most cases.

This is a mistake. In many instances the PMI approach to project management is both too broad (too general purpose) and too narrow (does not consider domain specific practices) at the same time. Although there are useful elements in things like PMBOK, this is far from the last word on the "body of knowledge" for project management.