A Comprehensive Overview and Interpretation of Risk and Uncertainty in Project Management Body of Knowledge, 7th Ed.

A Comprehensive Overview and Interpretation of
Risk and Uncertainty
in Project Management Body of Knowledge, 7th Ed.
Dr. Mustafa Degerli
PhD, PMP, PMI-RMP, PSM, ITIL, CMMI Associate, Lead Auditor

Agenda
• Risk and Uncertainty
• Risk as a Project Management Principle (Optimize Risk Responses)
• Uncertainty as a Project Performance Domain
• Tailoring Details
• Models, Methods, and Artifacts
A Comprehensive Overview and Interpretation of Risk and Uncertainty in Project Management Body of Knowledge, 7th Ed.
Dr. Mustafa Degerli, PhD, PMP, PMI-RMP, PSM, ITIL, CMMI Associate, Lead Auditor

Risk and Uncertainty
• Risk
• An uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative
effect on one or more project objectives
• Uncertainty
• A lack of understanding and awareness of issues, events, path to follow, or
solutions to pursue

Risk as a Project Management Principle
• The principles guide behavior
• Optimize risk responses
• Continually evaluate exposure to risk, both opportunities and threats,
to maximize positive impacts and minimize negative impacts to the
project and its outcomes
• Individual and overall risks can impact projects

• Risks can be positive (opportunities) or negative (threats)
• Risks are addressed continually throughout the project
• An organization’s risk attitude, appetite, and threshold influence how
risk is addressed
• Identified risks may or may not materialize in a project

• Risk appetite
• The degree of uncertainty an organization or individual is willing to accept in
anticipation of a reward
• Risk threshold
• The measure of acceptable variation around an objective that reflects the risk
appetite of the organization and stakeholders
• The risk threshold reflects the risk appetite

• Risk responses should be
• Appropriate for the significance of the risk
• Cost effective
• Realistic within the project context
• Agreed to by relevant stakeholders
• Owned by a responsible person

• Project teams endeavor to identify and evaluate known and emergent
risks, both internal and external to the project, throughout the life
cycle
• Project teams seek to maximize positive risks (opportunities) and
decrease exposure to negative risks (threats)
• Threats may result in issues such as delay, cost overrun, technical
failure, performance shortfall, or loss of reputation
• Opportunities can lead to benefits such as reduced time and cost,
improved performance, increased market share, or enhanced
reputation

• Overall project risk is the effect of uncertainty on the project as a
whole
• Overall risk arises from all sources of uncertainty, including individual
risks, and represents the exposure of the stakeholders to the
implications of variations in project outcome
• Management of overall project risk aims to keep project risk exposure
within an acceptable range
• Management strategies include reducing drivers of threats,
promoting drivers of opportunities, and maximizing the probability of
achieving overall project objectives

Uncertainty as a Project Performance Domain
• The principles guide behavior
• The performance domains present broad areas of focus in which to
demonstrate relevant behavior
• Uncertainty Performance Domain addresses activities and functions
associated with risk and uncertainty
• Projects exist in environments with varying degrees of uncertainty
• Uncertainty presents threats and opportunities that project teams
explore, assess, and decide how to handle

• Uncertainty: A lack of understanding and awareness of issues, events,
paths to follow, or solutions to pursue
• Ambiguity: A state of being unclear, having difficulty in identifying the
cause of events, or having multiple options from which to choose
• Complexity: A characteristic of a program or project or its
environment that is difficult to manage due to human behavior,
system behavior, and ambiguity
• Volatility: The possibility for rapid and unpredictable change
• Risk: An uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive
or negative effect on one or more project objectives

• Effective execution of this performance domain results in:
• An awareness of the environment in which projects occur, including, but not
limited to, the technical, social, political, market, and economic environments
• Proactively exploring and responding to uncertainty
• An awareness of the interdependence of multiple variables on the project
• The capacity to anticipate threats and opportunities and understand the
consequences of issues
• Project delivery with little or no negative impact from unforeseen events or
conditions
• Opportunities are realized to improve project performance and outcomes
• Cost and schedule reserves are utilized effectively to maintain alignment with
project objectives

• Uncertainty in the broadest sense is a state of not knowing or
unpredictability
• Nuances to uncertainty
• Risk associated with not knowing future events
• Ambiguity associated with not being aware of current or future conditions
• Complexity associated with dynamic systems having unpredictable outcomes

• Some aspects of the environment that contribute to project
uncertainty
• Economic factors such as volatility in prices, availability of resources, ability to
borrow funds, and inflation/deflation
• Technical considerations such as new or emerging technology, complexity
associated with systems, and interfaces
• Legal or legislative constraints or requirements
• Physical environment as it pertains to safety, weather, and working conditions
• Ambiguity associated with current or future conditions
• Social and market influences shaped by opinion and media
• Political influences, either external or internal to the organization

• Options for responding to uncertainty
• Gather information
• Conducting research, engaging experts, or performing a market analysis
• Prepare for multiple outcomes
• Having a primary solution available, as well as having backup or contingency plans
• Set-based design
• To explore options and learn from alternatives
• Build in resilience
• To adapt and respond quickly to unexpected changes

• Solutions for exploration of ambiguity
• Progressive elaboration
• Iterative process of increasing the level of detail in a project management plan
• Experiments
• A well-designed series of experiments can to help identify cause-and-effect relationships
• Prototypes
• To help distinguish the relationships

• Ways to work with complexity
• Systems-Based
• Decoupling, simulation
• Reframing
• Diversity, balance
• Process-based
• Iterate, engage, fail safe

• Ways to adress volatility
• Alternatives analysis
• Cost or schedule reserve

• Strategies for dealing with threats
• Avoid
• Act to eliminate the threat or protect the project from its impact
• Escalate
• A threat is outside the scope or the response would exceed the project manager’s
authority
• Transfer
• Shifting ownership to a third party to manage and to bear the impact
• Mitigate
• Act to reduce the probability of occurrence and/or impact of a threat
• Accept
• Acknowledge the existence of a threat, but no proactive action is planned
• Active acceptance (developing a contingency plan), passive acceptance, doing nothing.

• Strategies for dealing with opportunities
• Exploit
• Act to ensure that an opportunity occurs
• Escalate
• Outside the scope of the project or that the proposed response would exceed the
project manager’s authority
• Share
• Allocating ownership of an opportunity to a third party who is best able to capture the
benefit of that opportunity
• Enhance
• Act to increase the probability of occurrence or impact of an opportunity
• Accept
• Acknowledge the existence but no proactive action is planned

• Overall project risk is the effect of uncertainty on the project as a
whole, arising from all sources of uncertainty, including individual
risks and the exposure to the implications of variation
• Overall risk is often a function of complexity, ambiguity, and volatility
• If the overall risk on the project is too high, the organization may
choose to cancel the project
• A response to a specific threat might include multiple strategies

• Once a set of risk responses has been developed, it should be
reviewed to see whether the planned responses have added any
secondary risks
• The review should also assess the residual risk that will remain once
the response actions have been carried out
• Response planning should be repeated until residual risk is
compatible with the organization’s risk appetite.

• Taking an economic view of work prioritization allows the team to
prioritize threat avoidance and reduction activities
• Comparing the expected monetary value (EMV) of a risk to the
anticipated return on investment (ROI) of a deliverable or feature
allows the project manager to have conversations with sponsors or
product owners about where and when to incorporate risks
responses into the planned work

• Reserve
• An amount of time or budget set aside to account for handling risks
• Contingency reserve
• Set aside to address identified risks should they occur
• Management reserve
• A budget category used for unknown events such as unplanned, in-scope
work
• Establishing a frequent rhythm or cadence of review and feedback
sessions from a broad selection of stakeholders is helpful for
navigating project risk and being proactive with risk responses

• Daily standup meetings can be used in any project and are a source
for identifying potential threats and opportunities
• Reports of blockers or impediments could become threats if they
continue to delay progress
• Reports of progress and breakthroughs might point toward
opportunities to be further leveraged and shared

• Frequent demonstrations of increments of the product or service,
interim designs, or proof of concepts can surface threats and
opportunities
• Negative feedback from demonstrations or design reviews can be an
early indicator of threats related to dissatisfaction from stakeholders
if not corrected
• Positive feedback helps inform the project team regarding the areas
of development highly valued by the business representatives

• Addressing risk at regular status meetings ensures that risk
management remains relevant
• These meetings can be used to identify new risks as well as identify
changes to existing risks
• Retrospectives and lessons learned meetings can be used to
• Identify threats to performance, project team cohesion, etc., and to seek
improvements.
• Try different ways to exploit and enhance opportunities

• Interactions with other performance domains
Uncertainty
Planning
•Plan activities
to manage
uncertainty and
risks
Delivery
•Do activities to
manage
uncertainty and
risks
Measurement
•Check if the risk
level is
changing over
time
Project Work

• Life cycle and development approach impact how uncertainty will be
addressed
• On a predictive project where the scope is relatively stable, reserve in
the schedule and budget can be used to respond to risks
• On a project using an adaptive approach where the requirements are
likely to evolve and where there may be ambiguity around how
systems will interact or how stakeholders will react, the project team
can adjust plans to reflect evolving understanding or use reserves to
offset the impacts of realized risks

Tailoring Details
• Questions
• What is the risk appetite and risk tolerance for this endeavor?
• How are threats and opportunities best identified and addressed within the
selected development approach?
• How will the presence of project complexity, technological uncertainty,
product novelty, cadence, or progress tracking impact the project?
• Does the project’s size in terms of budget, duration, scope, or project team
size require a more detailed approach to risk management? Or is the project
small enough to justify a simplified risk management process?

Tailoring Details
• Questions
• Is a robust risk management approach demanded by high levels of innovation,
new technology, commercial arrangements, interfaces, or other external
dependencies? Or is the project simple enough that a reduced risk
management process will suffice?
• How strategically important is the project? Is the level of risk increased for
this project because it aims to produce breakthrough opportunities,
addresses significant blocks to organizational performance, or involves major
product innovation?

Models, Methods, and Artifacts
• Model
• A thinking strategy to explain a process, framework, or phenomenon
• Method
• A means for achieving an outcome, output, result, or project deliverable
• Artifact
• A template, document, output, or project deliverable

• Cynefin Framework
• Created by Dave Snowden, a conceptual framework used to diagnose cause-
and-effect relationships as a decision-making aid
• Helps identify behaviors, such as probing, sensing, responding, acting, and
categorizing, which can help impact the relationships between variables and
guide actions

• Cynefin Framework
• Offers five problem and decision-making contexts
• Where there is an obvious cause-and-effect relationship
• Complicated relationships exist when there is a set of known unknowns or a range of
correct answers
• Complex relationships include unknown unknowns
• In chaotic environments, the cause and effects are unclear
• Disordered relationships lack clarity and may require breaking them into smaller parts

• Stacey Matrix
• Developed by Ralph Stacey
• Looks at two dimensions to determine the relative complexity of a project
• The relative uncertainty of the requirements for the deliverable
• The relative uncertainty of the technology that will be used to create the deliverable
• Based on the relative uncertainty of these dimensions, a project is considered
simple, complicated, complex, or chaotic

• Alternatives analysis
• To evaluate identified options in order to select the options or approaches to
perform the work of the project
• Assumption and constraint analysis
• To ensure that assumptions and constraints are integrated into the project
plans and documents, and that there is consistency among them
• Probability and impact matrix
• A grid for mapping the probability of occurrence of each risk and its impact on
project objectives if that risk occurs

• SWOT analysis
• A SWOT analysis assesses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and
threats of an organization, project, or option
• What-if scenario analysis
• This analytical technique evaluates scenarios in order to predict their effect
on project objectives

• Risk review
• To analyze the status of existing risks and identify new risks
• Includes determining if the risk is still active and if there have been changes to
the risk attributes (such as probability, impact, urgency, etc.)
• Risk responses are evaluated to determine if they are effective or should be
updated.
• New risks may be identified and analyzed and risks that are no longer active
may be closed
• Risk reassessment is an example of a risk-review

• Assumption log
• Records all assumptions (factors considered to be true, real, or certain,
without proof or demonstration) and constraints (factors limit the options for
managing a project, program, portfolio, or process throughout the project)
• Risk-adjusted backlog
• Includes work and actions to address threats and opportunities
• Risk register
• Repository in which outputs of risk management processes are recorded
• Information in a risk register can include the person responsible for managing
the risk, probability, impact, risk score, planned risk responses, and other
information used to get a high-level understanding of individual risks

• Risk management plan
• Component of the project, program, or portfolio management plan that describes
how risk management activities will be structured and performed
• Risk breakdown structure
• This chart is a hierarchical representation of potential sources of risks
• Cause-and-effect diagram
• This diagram is a visual representation that helps trace an undesirable effect back to
its root cause
• Risk report
• This project document is developed progressively throughout the risk management
processes and summarizes information on individual project risks and the level of
overall project risk

• Contract
• Fixed-price, cost-reimbursable, time and materials, indefinite delivery
indefinite quantity
• Other agreements
• Memorandum of understanding, memorandum of agreement, service level
agreement, basic ordering agreement

A Comprehensive Overview and Interpretation of Risk and Uncertainty in Project Management Body of Knowledge, 7th Ed.

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