Pat Weaver and Lynda Bourne of Mosaicprojects have both made thoughtful arguments about dealing with the unexpected and how some may operate under the illusion that controlling the future is possible. In this discussion there seems to be a mixture between what is possible and external observations of "rare" events in the presence of expectations and intentions of those who build systems that are designed to fail safe.
These failures can be technical, operational, and even programmatic. A blog page is a very narrow channel to discuss the complexities of nuclear power plan failure modes, high voltage substations powering large particle physics experiments, or any other "complex system."
What has helped me comes to an understanding of how the "management in the presence of uncertainty," is the writings of several authors. Here's a short list of papers and books that can shed light on this complex and sometimes confusing topic of "managing risk." The first list can be located at the INSEAD site or with a little effort through Google. INSEAD provides a free membership for its research. So I won't provide the link, since you have to log in to retrieve the documents.
- "Adjusting project management techniques to uncertainty," Christoph Loch, Michael Plch and Arnoud De Meyer, INSEAD.
- "Diagnosing and Managing Unforeseeable Uncertainty to Improve Venture Capital Returns," C. Loch M. Solt and E. Bailey 2004/101/TOM, Working Paper Series, INSEAD.
- "Decisions Under Preliminary Information: Rush and be Wrong or Wait and be Late?", C. Loch and C. Terwiesch, 2000/83/TM
- "Managing Projects Uncertainty: From Variation to Chaos," Arnoud De Meyer, Christoph H. Loch and Michael T. Pich, MIT Sloan Management Review, Winter 2002.
- "Risky Choices and Correlated Background Risk," I. Tsetlin and R. Winkler 2005/25/DS
- "On Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Complexity in Project Management," Michael T. Pich, Christoph H. Loch, Arnoud De Meyer, Management Science, 2002 INFORMS, Vol. 48, No. 8, August 2002 pp. 1008–1023.
There are other paradigms for technical and programmatic risk management
