Risk Management in Action - Part 2

Symptoms of a Project in Need of Risk Management

If we are not proactive enough to identify Risks early on in the project, potential risks will start materializing. As an alert project manager you could use the following checklist to know if the uncertainties have started getting manifested into realities.

1. Poor executive buy-in
• No or minimal participation from top client side executives
• No SOW or any agreement document to proceed with work
• No communication channels with the client top brass

2. Poor Requirements
• High number of TBD in the requirements specifications
• High number of issues in issue tracker with status as open
• Ever changing requirements with late or no baseline of the requirements
• Client raising CRs even in advance phases of the project

3. Poor Estimation and Scheduling
• Team staying back late from the very beginning of the project
• Some components in project not estimated / accounted for in the estimates
• Members waiting to be assigned work, waiting due to dependency on modules
• Project having many assumptions that are not validated by the client / stake holders / experts
• Project crunch not quantified

4. Poor Project Management –
• Project resources working on unplanned activities,
• More than average time is required to report quantitative metrics

5. Poor Quality –
• High defect injection rate
• High amount of rework
• High number of iterations before closing of issues

6. Poor Communication –
• Team does not know what to do,
• Gap in Top Management and Client perception of the project health against the ground zero situation.
• Lack of comfort of project manager front in breaking the bad news

7. Lower Team morale –
• People working in isolation,
• The “team spirit” missing and people issues within team,
• Team Members no longer have faith in the management