I will be presenting a paper at the PMI Global Congress in New Orleans, October 27-29. Entitled “21^st Century Risk Management: Supporting Mathematical Analysis with Social Influence” it is about bringing the local influence of people and persuasion to the analytical world of risk management.

All too often risk management is treated as a dispassionate science of probabilities. However projects are people oriented with risks (and opportunities in particular) being greatly influenced by behaviour. Experiments made in moving risks and opportunities from the methodical risk analysts and project managers to social “project charmers” have shown great results in risk reduction and opportunity exploitation. This partnership between math and social influence seems to be a winning combination and the presentation explains some case studies where this has been applied with great success.

I hope to be presenting the session with Dennis Stevens who shares many of my views on agile risk management. I have worked with Dennis on a number of initiatives including the PMI-ACP certification and the Software Extension to the PMBOK Guide. I enjoy Dennis’ sense of humor and depth of knowledge. I am really looking forward to the event.

Shown below is the outline description for the paper:

21^st Century Risk Management: Supporting Mathematical Analysis with Social Influence

Today’s complex projects need proactive risk management to stand any chance of executing successfully. Yet, all the steps of: identifying, classifying, analyzing and prioritizing in the world are for nothing if the risks cannot be effectively avoided, transferred, or reduced. These risk avoidance and reduction steps are largely human led activities with success criteria closely linked to social influence, communications and campaigning. 

While the project manager is critical to project co-ordination and success, they are rarely the domain experts on modern projects and instead bring subject matter experts (SMEs) together to collaborate on novel solutions. These knowledge worker projects require a whole team approach to not only risk finding, but also risk resolving.

This session explains the need for proactive risk management through an examination of the “Flaw of Averages”, it walks through the risk management process examining traditional and lean/agile based processes. Then the importance of social influence in risk mitigation is explored. Using case studies, a shared team approach to risk management is described. Through collaborative games, new risk visualization techniques, and empowered teams, examples of risk avoidance and risk mitigation actions are examined.