Essential Management Principles
Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute has a useful website on risk. It has identified seven management principles essential to effective risk management and the following table is adapted from those principles:
| Corporate Perspective |
- Viewing developments within the context of strategic goals
- Recognizing both the potential value of opportunity and the potential impact of adverse effects
|
| Forward-looking View |
- Thinking toward tomorrow, identifying uncertainties, anticipating potential outcomes
- Managing project resources and activities while anticipating uncertainties
|
| Open Communication |
- Encouraging free-flowing information at and between all project levels
- Enabling formal, informal and impromptu communication
- Using processes that value the individual voice (bringing unique knowledge and insight to identifying and managing risk)
|
| Integrated Management |
- Making risk management an integral and vital part of project management
- Adapting risk management methods and tools to a project's infrastructure and culture
|
| Continuous Process |
- Sustaining constant vigilance
- Identifying and managing risks routinely through all phases of the project's lifecycle
|
| Shared Vision |
- Mutual vision based on common purpose, shared ownership and collective communication
- Focusing on results
|
| Teamwork |
- Working co-operatively to achieve common goals
- Pooling talent, skills and knowledge
|
In considering the above principles it is interesting to note the observation from Carnegie Mellon University (op cit) that 'While there are no prerequisites to performing risk management, it is more effectively practiced by organizations or projects which have acquired some degree of maturity.'
HEFCE has produced a useful briefing for senior managers and governors on the issue of risk management. Click here to view the briefing http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2001/01_24.htm
