Who is the risk owner?

In the post credit crunch era will anyone believe risk management again? Risk management has gone down the road of building ever more complex and sophisticated databases of project risk. Each risk is categorised and analysed to death. Do we run the risk of missing the wood for the trees? Most critical risks are not associated with the project we are delivering, more specifically they are linked to the effect of other project and associated uncertainties. These unknown, unknowns are difficult to put your finger on and many of them are outside the control of the project. They belong more to the organisation or the portfolio. Programme Managers are not stupid; they much prefer to keep pushing the risks and accountability back down to the project manager.

May be it’s time for a change?

Maybe we should put our risk management efforts not in to worrying about the risks to the delivery of the project, but the risk of the project to the organisation and other projects. The issue is who would own these risks and where would we record them. How many organisations have programme risk registers.

It is much easier to go back to the old ways of managing the project as an island.

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