Opposite of risk is not safe!
Risk-seeking behavior has been stereotyped and templated over the years. We routinely associate rash and optimistic planning, aggressive schedules, seeking new gold, banking on unproven technology, and building for newer markets as some of the risk-taking behaviors. Unfortunately, we automatically assume that things that are non-risky are safe. But are they?...
How do you schedule tasks in a project?
How do you decide what tasks to schedule first: the complex ones or the easy ones? the short ones or the long ones? the risky ones or the sure-shot ones? Most often, this task sequence is determined by hard logic, soft logic, or some other external constraints. However, how do you decide when there are no such contraints? If we look at the risk driving the project lifecycle and scheduling, then it is natural to expect high-risk tasks being tackled at the start just so that we are systematically driving down risks in the project and achieve higher certainty levels as we get close to the project. However, it seems inconceivable that someone will cherry-pick the easy tasks first and leave all high-risk ones for the end! Clearly, that is setting up the project for a grand finale of...
Do you care about positive risks?
Risk is generally assumed to have negative impact. However, a ‘risk’ can also have a positive impact. PMBOK 4/e talks of positive risks and calls them ‘opportunities’. Given that most project managers only have a passing knowledge of managing risks proactively (our industry still seems to reward crisis management notwithstanding the fact that most often people who fix a crisis were responsible for it in the first place!), it is extremely likely that most such opportunities are wasted. A risk is just a future event with probability of occurance between 0% and 100%. If such probability is 100%, surely that is a certainty, and hence can be put on the plan. If it is 0%, again it is a certainty and hence you can plan accordingly. Risks are also known as ‘known unknowns’ because we know about those events...