PM meetup of Open Tech Week by Sigma Software, Odessa 2019

1. RISKS
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2. ABOUT
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• Masters’ degree in Business Intelligence - KNURE
• Head of Kyiv branch at Sigma Software company
• 11 years in project management
• 3 years in Account management and Business development
• CSPO, GTD adopter
• Contacts:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/irina-shymko-26b96626/

3. WHAT WE ARE GOING TO TALK ABOUT
 RISKS
 HOW WE ACT WHEN WE SEE RISKS
 EXAMPLES
 TIPS & RECOMENDATIONS
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4. WHAT IS RISK?
 Risk is the potential for uncontrolled loss of something of value. Values (such as physical health, social
status, emotional well-being, or financial wealth) can be gained or lost when taking risk resulting from a
given action or inaction, foreseen or unforeseen (planned or not planned). Risk can also be defined as the
intentional interaction with uncertainty. Uncertainty is a potential, unpredictable, and uncontrollable
outcome; risk is an aspect of action taken in spite of uncertainty. © Wikipedia
 Individual risk is an “an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on
one or more project objectives” © PMBoK
 Risk is an uncertain event or set of events which, should it occur, will have an effect on the achievement of
objectives © Stakeholdermap
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5. WHAT PROCESS TO CHOOSE?
 FORMAL risk management ( risk management plan + impact analysis, etc. )
 More light-weighted process
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6. WHAT DOES YOUR CLIENT THINK OF?
I’ve chosen the best company , they will make it, I should not worry about
anything!
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7. WHAT ARE YOU THINKING OF?
Project is burning or may burn and client has to listen to me and understand all
consequences!
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8. MAIN PROBLEM THAT WE SOLVE
How to make client an active participant in risk assessment processes?
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9. WHERE TO FIND RISKS?
 Proposals
 Weekly reports checkpoints
 Risk matrixes
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10. SITUATION #1: SILENCE OR REJECTION
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11. SITUATION#2: WAITING FOR STORM TO PASS
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12. SITUATION#3: SO WHAT?
1. There are no documented requirements for the project
2. Junior developer is assigned to the project
3. There is a risk that if go decision will not be made by customer in the nearest future, current team will not be available to step in second phase. That will
probably lead to productivity loss, high price of knowledge transfer, customer unsatisfaction.
4. Laravel Nova is a new technology, chosen for the admin panel for Project. It could be not appropriate for the system or not suitable for the administrator work.
5. Our Contact point - PO from Customer side will leave the Company in 4 weeks it may lead to changes in further collaboration. New PO wasn't assigned yet from
the Customer side.
6. Risk of working with Сlient without new Work Order signed
7. PM demoed a new pro version that looks like a whole new platform. The structure of Feature1-Freature 2-Feature3 has been changed to Feature1-Freature 5-
Feature3 . Multiple creatives can now be assigned to an Ad Set. Furthermore, there’s a whole new concept of an Advertiser - we can probably think of it as a
Company in V4. It’ll allow us to have a more granular view, including separate time zones for each advertiser if needed. Overall, it seems like the platform has
become more advanced. New creative assignment logic, new reporting, new tools for analysis. But since we rely heavily on HasOffers data and use their
platform via API, it could be that there isn’t much we could get from this new version. We haven’t seen the new API yet, but all of us agree that there would be a
lot of work to migrate to the new version
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13. Stop call risks “RISKS” and call them “PROBLEMS”
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WHAT CAN WE DO?

14.  Risk Problem should be described in a way of question
 Risk Problem should be described as easy as possible
 Risk Problem should “push” receiver to do something
 If there is something that client cant make an impact on, do not raise that. Internal questions should be solved
internally
 Do not put into TO persons boss. If you want to do that, give a person a call before you send an email and
notify them
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SOME MORE RULES

15. WHAT TO KNOW
 It is always about trust! Either you show the confidence or tell why you want to talk about some point.
 Know your client
 Talk about risks and don’t accept declines
 Do it regularly
 Write risk in a way you would want to hear it
 Speak only about important things
 Get feedback before sending from mentor, colleague etc
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16. TIPS
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 Use les than 30 words per sentence
- Due to the fact that =because
 Totally lacked the ability to = could not
 Replace adjectives with data
- We made the platform much faster
 We reduced server side tp90 latency from 10ms to 1ms
 Eliminate weasel words
 Nearly all users = 91% of users
 Significantly better = 53% of increase
 Does your writing pass “So what” test?
 Form questions to get only short answers like “Yes”, “No” etc

17. 1. There are no documented requirements for the project
2. Junior developer is assigned to the project
3. There is a risk that if go decision will not be made by customer in the nearest future, current team will not be available to step in second phase.
That will probably lead to productivity loss, high price of knowledge transfer, customer unsatisfaction.
4. Laravel Nova is a new technology, chosen for the admin panel for Project. It could be not appropriate for the system or not suitable for the
administrator work.
5. Our Contact point - PO from Customer side will leave the Company in 4 weeks it may lead to changes in further collaboration. New PO wasn't
assigned yet from the Customer side.
6. Risk of working with Сlient without new Work Order signed
7. PM demoed a new pro version that looks like a whole new platform. The structure of Feature1-Freature 2-Feature3 has been changed to Feature1-
Freature 5-Feature3 . Multiple creatives can now be assigned to an Ad Set. Furthermore, there’s a whole new concept of an Advertiser - we can
probably think of it as a Company in V4. It’ll allow us to have a more granular view, including separate time zones for each advertiser if needed.
Overall, it seems like the platform has become more advanced. New creative assignment logic, new reporting, new tools for analysis. But since we
rely heavily on HasOffers data and use their platform via API, it could be that there isn’t much we could get from this new version. We haven’t seen
the new API yet, but all of us agree that there would be a lot of work to migrate to the new version
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EXAMPLES

18. THANK YOU!
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