Revista PM Network - junho de 2012. Artigo Talking Points, Risk by Denene Brox na qual nosso consultor Fábio Pitorri foi citado por ter desenvolvido um plano de gerenciamento de riscos voltado para executivos.

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2. Talking Points
Poor risk
communication
can derail your
project. Here’s
when and
how to warn
your key
stakeholders
about potential
threats.
Risk
by Denene Brox
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3. 71
E Even the most stringent risk management won’t get the job done without
strategic communication. In fact, poor communication is a risk itself if key
stakeholders aren’t kept informed.
Project managers are on the front line of communicating potential and
impending risks to an assortment of stakeholders—and each demands dif-
ferent information. To articulate risks, begin here:
Understanding Appetites and Tolerances
Project managers must first understand their organization’s risk tolerance.
“As a project manager, you don’t have the authority to overstep the
bounds of risk tolerance for your organization,” says Barry Molnaa, PMP,
Los Angeles, California, USA-based director of project management at
Arcadis, a design, engineering and management consultancy for the infra-
structure, water, environment and construction industries. “It’s important
to have an understanding of what risks your organization is willing to
tolerate and how to manage those risks.”
An organization’s risk appetite can vary based on its age, says Evan
Wheeler, director of information security for Omgeo, a financial trade
processing service provider in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. A growing
company may be willing to shoulder more risks to move forward quickly,
whereas a well-established corporation could tend to be more risk-averse.
“Anyone who’s in a risk-management role needs to understand his or
percent her company’s threshold,” he says. “You need to know when you’ve hit that
threshold and when something needs to be reviewed and a decision made
about how to proceed.”
The portion of Project managers who work for a variety of clients need to acquaint
organizations that themselves with each client’s risk tolerance at the start of every project.
Even if his clients have firm risk-management processes in place, senior
now practice risk consultant Marc Burlereaux, PMI-RMP, PMP, PgMP, conducts a risk
analysis on every initiative. He’s currently working as a European release
management manager for a private bank in Geneva, Switzerland.
At the beginning of each project, he holds a kickoff meeting with the
Source: PMI 2012 Pulse of the Profession Report sponsor to evaluate the risk appetite depending on certain criteria, includ-
ing whether the project is tactical or strategic, and what the change impact
will be.
Some organizations don’t have a project management risk policy estab-
lished, putting the onus on project managers. Such was the case at Contax,
a company that deploys contact centers, when Fabio Pitorri, CAPM, PMI-
RMP, PMI-SP, PMP, PgMP, came on board. Mr. Pitorri, a consultant and
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4. instructor at Dinsmore Associates in São Paulo, Brazil, got up to speed
by studying project documents, reading the project management
office bibliography and interviewing stakeholders. He then developed
a risk-management plan that he presented to executives for approval.
Once you have a solid understanding of your company’s risk-
tolerance threshold, you’re better equipped for an effective risk com-
munications plan.
Targeted Messaging As a project
Each of your various project stakeholders has his or her own agenda manager, you
and goals. Your organization’s executive team requires particular
don’t have
the authority
information and a different communication style than your team to overstep
members, who are involved in the day-to-day details of delivery. the bounds of
“Generally, as you go further up the corporate chain, people want risk tolerance
to see more of a summarized review,” Mr. Wheeler says. for your
Your job as a project manager is to balance those various needs organization.
— Barry Molnaa, PMP, Arcadis,
to communicate risks and risk-mitigation actions in ways that are Los Angeles, California, USA
relevant to each of your stakeholders. Gather that information during
your early risk-tolerance exploration phase.
Keep these points in mind when it comes time to articulate risk for
four different groups: executives/senior management, team members,
business managers and external stakeholders.
Executives/Senior Managers
Executive leadership is concerned with the overall success of the project
and may define success differently than someone who’s actually working
on the project, says Mr. Molnaa, who’s also a risk analysis and project
management instructor at UCLA Extension, part of the University of Cali-
fornia at Los Angeles. When articulating risk to this group, point out the
severity and likelihood of a particular risk event, he suggests.
“Senior management needs enough detail in terms of milestones to
gauge whether progress is being made, so they want to see major mile-
stones,” Mr. Wheeler says. “Senior leaders may not want to know all the
gory details about how you came to a conclusion.”
If a risk can be mitigated by adjustments within the control of the proj-
ect team and the completion date isn’t affected, then it probably doesn’t
need to bubble up to the executive team level.
“Senior leadership needs to be aware when trade-offs must be made,”
he explains. “Maybe another project might have to be delayed to keep this
one on track, or another internal initiative might need to be postponed.
Another scenario is trade-offs might need to be made in terms of the deliv-
erables from the project. Some nice-to-haves might have to get dropped to
allow for the essential targets to be met.”
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5. Team Members
Project team members are working at the task level and appre-
ciate more details on how impending or potential risks will
affect their work, Mr. Molnaa says. “They’re asking questions
such as, ‘Is my task going to be completed on time? How does Project team
what I do on my task affect what happens on subsequent tasks?’”
Stakeholders at the project level likely will not just want to
members
know what the issues are, but also a detailed account of how appreciate more
those were prioritized and how they will be mitigated, Mr.
Wheeler says. details on how
Regular team meetings keep team members abreast of
risks and action plans throughout the initiative’s life cycle, he
impending or
suggests. potential risks will
If the need arises to discuss particular risks, schedule a
meeting with the relevant project team members. “Identify affect their work.
appropriate risk response actions, assign ownership of the risk
to a specific team member, and develop a risk plan and moni-
toring approach,” Mr. Molnaa says.
Business Managers
Business managers tend to have simple priorities and usually are most
concerned with completing projects on time and within budget, Mr.
Wheeler notes.
“They want to look at the big picture, so when you have multiple poten-
tial issues to report, look for commonality to group them together,” he
advises. “You might categorize them by root cause, by consequences or by
common mitigations. This way, the management team gets a feeling for
the magnitude of the problem without having to read through the detail of
every individual risk.”
When there is a risk to the quality of a client relationship, your business
managers will want to know about it as soon as possible. As a consultant for
an engineering firm, Mr. Molnaa’s business managers aren’t only focused
on profit.
“They’re concerned about making sure that we maintain a consistent
level of quality on our deliverables that allows us to maintain a high level of
client satisfaction,” he explains. “When you’re doing outside projects, most
of your projects come from repeat business.”
To communicate that you’re maintaining a positive relationship with
your clients, regularly report on any potential risks that could hamper
the relationship.
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6. External Stakeholders
Communicating risk to external stakeholders can be tricky,
Mr. Molnaa says. Because this group isn’t familiar with the
particulars of project risk management, you have to fully
explain concepts, avoid jargon and show benefits to gain
acceptance.
For instance, the public might react negatively to an
Because
infrastructure project, focusing on short-term inconve-
niences during construction. One method Mr. Molnaa has
external
found effective is to hold meetings and invite the public to
ask questions.
stakeholders
“It’s important that we communicate the long-term aren’t familiar
benefits such as less traffic congestion in the end,” he says.
For other external stakeholders, Mr. Pitorri has found with the particulars
that explaining risk on an individual basis can be effective.
That’s how he chose to communicate with external stake- of project risk
holders on a project to replace an important infrastructure
component at a contact center with 5,000 employees. The
management,
implementation generated the need to turn off the build-
ing’s power for 10 minutes—interfering with the workflow
you have to fully
of other building occupants.
A key impact Mr. Pitorri needed to communicate was
explain concepts,
that the power might not be reestablished after 10 minutes. avoid jargon and
When explaining the risk, he emphasized that the activity
was scheduled to take place over the weekend at midnight, show benefits to
which greatly mitigated the impact by reducing the number
of people who would suffer if that risk occurred. gain acceptance.
“However, there still were some non-related clients who
needed to be at work during the shutdown,” Mr. Pitorri says.
“To avoid confusion, risks were identified and discussed
individually with each one, and potential problems were
presented to each.”
While the project was completed successfully and with
minimal unexpected interruption, Mr. Pitorri found that
communicating ahead of time gave external stakeholders
and the project team ample time to plan together their risk
responses and maintain positive relationships.
“The main lesson learned was that we can deliver a more
successful project if we properly interact and communicate
with all related stakeholders,” he says. PM
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