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A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:
It took us years to move from top-down to people-centric management, but the journey was worth it Peter Drucker once said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Throughout my career, I have spent a lot of time in the strategy room. But no matter what we decided there, until we got the organizational culture right, we were unsuccessful in executing our goals.
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Organisations that promote formalised and standardised risk management practices can create a risk culture where their employees view risk management as a compliance and tick-the-box exercise.
In comparison, organisations that intentionally promote a more informal environment where risk discussions and information sharing naturally occur as part of the broader organisational culture when making decisions can experience a positive risk culture.
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This article focuses on the task level of a project which is the key to merging the different methodologies. There is a lot of articles on line that explain what the merger will look like and the pros and cons of it but I found nothing to explain HOW TO DO IT? This article goes into quite a bit of detail but I felt I had no choice to convey to the reader how to merge the two methodologies with examples.
Agile was created for software development projects. Some of the key benefits of this methodology are flexibility, speed, high quality, and continuous improvement. These features are implemented at the Scrum level. One major problem with Agile is that it does not scale up to large projects due to lack of structure, changing requirements and scope, and lack of a baseline to measure project performance. In my opinion, it works well for small software and IT projects that are less than a year in duration and less than $1M in value
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If you are running a business today using Agile methods, it’s likely that you are not getting the productivity boost from it that you should, and your time to market for new features is probably not what it could be either.
Is that the end of the world? By and large, yes! The problem is that your impaired delivery capabilities have a substantial impact on your business agility. How is that? Your digital development process is at the center of your product management capability and if you can’t iterate quickly enough it will limit the opportunities for your product managers to redirect the evolution of your products while they’re in development. When you are in a hurry to get new or updated products to market, they will be less evolved, less marketable and less competitive.
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Projects go wrong. Despite some people’s best efforts, hopes to the contrary, or helpless denials, that’s a fact. ‘Best effort’ is sometimes not good enough to help a failing project recover, ‘hope’ can merely be unfounded optimism and denial in the light of facts is just part of the grief cycle.
Nobody really wants to fail, very few like it, and even fewer will enjoy it. Those that planned a project did not purposely plan to fail. Perhaps there may have been a bit of a gamble with a tendency towards optimism rather than applying the caution of pessimism. Projects are about risk as well as opportunity and as the idiom goes, “Nothing ventured…nothing gained” but not every cloud has a silver lining.
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Just how safe is “safe”? Should working in a chemical plant have the same level of risk as skydiving (which kills about 40 people per year in the U.S.A Should working in a plant be as safe as driving your car? Or should it be as safe as flying in a plane, which is safer than driving a car by two orders of magnitude?
While the term FAR may be simple to understand and may represent a useful yardstick, many companies, especially in the U.S., are unwilling to put such targets in writing. Imagine walking into company XYZ’s plush world headquarters office and on the wall in the reception area is a sign that reads, “We at XYZ consider it tolerable to kill 4 people per 100-million-man hours.” The lawyers would have a field day! However, as we shall see, some organizations have established such quantified risk targets.
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Businesses exist because they are formed by entrepreneurs. They exist to earn a return for the business owners and shareholders.
Organizations exist to fulfill a specific social purpose and to satisfy a specific need of society. The potential for creating value for their customers and stakeholders is a key motive for all types of organizations, including the public sector and not-for-profits.
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This article is the final of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so, we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.
In previous articles we’ve looked at the core elements of the risk management framework and the role of leadership and commitment, integration, design, implementation, evaluation and improvement more specifically. We’ve also briefly looked at the risk management process in a general sense, the importance of communication and consultation, how to set your scope, context and criteria, identifying, analysing and evaluating risks, and monitoring and reviewing risks. In this article, we’ll be looking at recording and reporting risks.
[Read more…]This article is the thirteenth of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so, we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.
In previous articles we’ve looked at the core elements of the risk management framework and the role of leadership and commitment, integration, design, implementation, evaluation and improvement more specifically. We’ve also briefly looked at the risk management process in a general sense, the importance of communication and consultation, how to set your scope, context and criteria, identifying, analysing and evaluating risks, as well as treating risk. In this article, we’ll be looking at how you can monitor and review your risk management process.
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Dianna Deeney in her piece in CERM Insights #362 notes that big data may provide the quality profession with more professional opportunities. Dr Anil Maheshwari in his book Data Analytics: Made Accessible specifically indicates that quality management will benefit from big data. (1)
There can be no doubt that big data is an important environmental change and challenge for most businesses. It changes the environment because with increased computer storage and computational power, companies can access and evaluate more and more information about process performance and customer satisfaction. It is a challenge because the field is relatively new, and management is still trying to understand how the information can best be applied.
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Today with robotic development, digital transformation, Artificial Intelligence, and other projects t will involve a multi-discipline team with many interfaces. To keep budget and schedule on these types of projects, inputs and outputs from all disciplines must be accurate, complete and timely. If not, your project will be risk.
All tasks (Work Packages) have a manager. Inputs from another task manager to start your task is your supplier. Output from your task goes to another task manager. In this case you become a customer. Every task manager is a supplier and a customer.
[Read more…]This article is the twelfth of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so, we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.
In previous articles we’ve looked at the core elements of the risk management framework and the role of leadership and commitment, integration, design, implementation, evaluation and improvement more specifically. We’ve also briefly looked at the risk management process in a general sense, the importance of communication and consultation, how to set your scope, context and criteria, as well as the identification, analysis and evaluation of risks. In this article, we’ll be looking at treating risk. [Read more…]
Ethics is about making choices that may not always feel good or seem like they benefit you but are the right choices to make. They are the choices that are examples of model citizens and examples of the golden rules. We’ve all heard the golden rules: Don’t hurt, don’t steal, don’t lie, or one of the most famous: Do unto others as you would have done to you. These are not just catchy phrases; these are words of wisdom that any productive member of society should strive to live by.
[Read more…]Abraham Lincoln is attributed to have famously said “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” A more recent US President coined a more manipulative spin on Lincoln’s erudite words… “You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.” Preying on ignorance is a human trait which, although frowned upon, certainly thrived in history, and definitely thrives today.
[Read more…]This article is the eleventh of fourteen parts to our risk management series. The series will be taking a look at the risk management guidelines under the ISO 31000 Standard to help you better understand them and how they relate to your own risk management activities. In doing so, we’ll be walking through the core aspects of the Standard and giving you practical guidance on how to implement it.
In previous articles we’ve looked at the core elements of the risk management framework, as well as the role of leadership and commitment, integration, design, implementation, evaluation and improvement more specifically. We’ve also briefly looked at the risk management process in a general sense, and we’ve also focused on the importance of communication and consultation, as well as how to set your scope, context and criteria. In this article, we’ll be looking at risk assessments and the role of risk identification, analysis and evaluation in such assessments.
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