Once the plan is in place & agreed the project then moves into the execution phase. This is when things really start happening and, if the planning has been done properly, things should proceed according to plan – right ?……Wrong !!

No matter how good the planning, in reality, things rarely proceed to plan. This is where the skills of the Project Manager come into play.

Each stage of the plan will have obstacles, some minor and some major, which need to be overcome in order for the plan to proceed. These obstacles may be referred to as RISKS and it is part of the Project Managers role to identify those risks, quantify them and mitigate against them.

It is useful to create a Risk Management log (normally in spreadsheet form) which should have the following headers as minimum:-

RISK , MITIGATION,  EXPIRY DATE,  SEVERITY,  TREND

Other factors may also be tracked but the principal is to log all the risks in severity order so that they may be prioritised and addressed accordingly. This should be done by the team and the results published to the wider business so that everyone is aware of the situation. The Risk log should be reviewed periodically and any new risks added. Any which are deemed closed will be marked as such.

So, by addressing the project risks in a structured way their impact may be minimized and the project kept on track.

If the Critical path is extended at any point the whole project delivery will be impacted so the structure of the plan should be reviewed to see if any tasks may be shortened to pull in the overall timescale.

If this is not possible then the end customer (external or internal) must be informed of the change to delivery date so that their expectations are not adverse to reality. This may cause some short term pain but it is always better to get the bad news out early if the alternatives have been exhausted.
Remember:-

all projects have risks, its how you manage them which counts.

chris@projectsguru.co.uk

www.projectsguru.co.uk