Project Risk Management
Processes, Techniques and Insights
Chapter One
Uncertainty, risk, and their
management
I keep six honest serving men, they taught me all I knew; their names are what and
why and when and how and where and who.-Rudyard Kipling
Uncertainty as a central feature of effective
project management
The need to manage uncertainty is inherent in most projects that require formal
project management, using 'uncertainty' in the plain English 'lack of certainty'
sense. Consider the following illustrative definition of a project:
an endeavour in which human, material and financial resources are
organised in a novel way, to undertake a unique scope of work of given
specification, within constraints of cost and time, so as to achieve unitary,
beneficial change, through the delivery of quantified and qualitative
objectives-Turner (1992).
This definition highlights the change-inducing nature of projects, the need to
organize a variety of resources under significant constraints, and the central
role of objectives in project definition. It also suggests inherent uncertainty
related to novel organization and a unique scop ... read full excerpt from Project Risk Management: Processes, Techniques and Insights, 2nd Edition ebook
