Risk Management is about many things - but it is first and foremost about estimating future outcomes.
Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him saying, "This fellow began to build and was not able to finish." - Luke 14:28-30
To manage the risk of not enough money, not enough time, the probability of unacceptable outcomes we need to estimate. It's as simple as that and as complex as that.
Risk management is essential for development and production of products and services because key information about cost schedule, and technical performance are uncertain and many times unknown until later in the project.
Proceeding to spend other peoples money in the presence of these uncertainties is not only bad management, it's bad economics - the microeconomics of decision making requires estimating the impacts of any decision - the opportunity cost of that decision.
Risk management is concerned with the outcome of future events, whose exact outcome is unknown, and with how to deal with these uncertainties as a range of possible outcomes. - Effective Risk Management: Some Keys to Success, 2nd Edition, Edmund H. Conrow.
So when you here we can make decisions about the future without estimating ask yourself, did that speaker ever read about risk management. And as Tim Lister says
Risk Management is How Adults Manage Projects
