How to Manage Project Opportunity and Risk – why uncertainty management can be a much better approach than risk management

Projects are about the planning and delivery of beneficial change. This beneficial change may involve the creation of a desired physical asset or some less tangible organizational change. In either case, the pursuit of opportunities is an inherent central concern. Throughout any project what can be achieved is subject to uncertainty. Uncertainty underlies risk and the pursuit of inherent project opportunities, both of which require careful management alongside an ongoing search for all other opportunities to improve performance. This book explains how and why uncertainty management should be employed in all projects to pursue all opportunities in the face of all relevant uncertainty and risk. This approach goes well beyond what can be achieved with most risk management practice. The target readership for this book includes two groups of experienced professionals. One group is director level senior managers who would like to broaden the scope and effectiveness of their organization’s current ‘risk management’ process capability for projects, operations and corporate strategy contexts, what some refer to as enterprise risk management (ERM). The second group is those involved in implementing that capability in a projects context. Aspiring members of both these groups are also target readers. This is a very broad target audience, beyond the scope of all ‘project risk management’ books. In part this wide target readership is driven by the wide scope of the ‘project’ concept which we believe needs to be addressed by everyone involved in projects. In broad terms a corporate view of ‘projects’ includes projects of all types and sizes, from the small and simple to the large and complex, including programmes and portfolios of programmes, fully integrated with associated corporate operations and corporate strategy. This book uses ‘project’ in this broad sense, with a direct concern for the whole lifecycle of projects and the associated deliverable asset or organisational change, from conception to termination. In all cases links between projects, operations and corporate strategy are part