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Project
Managers: Are Your Risks Becoming Cost Overruns, |
At the present time Management and Technology Associates solely
supports the United States Government as an Enterprise Risk Management
Adviser. We will not discuss specifics
of this role, nor accept any outside work, nor provide referrals to avoid a
conflict of interest or even the perception of a conflict of interest. This notice will be removed if there is a
change in status regarding support provided to the United States
Government. Thank you for your interest
in Management and Technology Associates.
Management and Technology
Associates works with mid- to large-scale companies in the
aerospace, defense, financial, homeland security, information technology,
manufacturing, petrochemical, technology, and utility industries, and other
selected fields who want to reduce project uncertainty, and better develop and deliver
products within budget, on-time, and meeting performance requirements. We typically
work on mid- to large-scale projects and programs ($10 Million to $10+ Billion)
that involve cost, schedule, and/or technical performance challenges from
concept formulation through product delivery phases. We have also successfully worked on very
small projects ($250 Thousand) and very large programs ($100+ Billion) as well,
and have had primary responsibility for risk management in several winning
proposals with a contract and option dollar value far exceeding $10
Billion. Our achievements have been
recognized by peers in a number of industries and disciplines, such as systems
engineering [Dr. Edmund H. Conrow selected as a Fellow, International Council
on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), recognizing his work as a practitioner and
researcher for risk management, and cost, performance, schedule trade methods;
Dr. Conrow also named an INCOSE Expert Systems Engineering Professional
(ESEP)], aerospace (Life Associate Fellow, American Institute of Aeronautics
and Astronautics), electrical engineering [Life Senior Member, Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineering], remote sensing [Emeritus (Life)
Member, American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing], and others.
If you’re like most project managers
and senior staff, you’re facing increased pressure to reduce project
uncertainty, contain and eliminate product cost overruns, schedule slips, and
technical shortfalls, and more accurately predict potential project
outcomes. We help clients develop and
deliver products on-budget, on-time, and meeting performance requirements, and
assist them in balancing cost, schedule, performance, and risk. Companies that are willing to invest in risk
management and associated implementation can receive these benefits on
near-term projects. This investment can also create a proactive risk management
culture that will improve competitive posture in the mid- to long-run.
State-of-the-art project risk
management is helping many organizations and their projects reduce
project uncertainty, adverse cost, schedule, and/or technical performance
project impacts, and allow more accurate predictions of project outcomes. For example, we have found that a single risk averted late in product development can save
millions of dollars on a mid- to
large-scale project and pay for most, if not all, risk management
expenditures. Averting more than one
risk will often lead to cost savings (increased profits) and better delivery
schedules.
Several times we have helped
avert risks that have led to millions of dollars saved, increased technical
performance, and shorter delivery schedules for our clients!
World-Class Risk Management?
Prove it!
How many times
have you heard a consultant or company brag about their “world-class risk
management?” These statements are almost
always unsubstantiated. In other cases
the consultant’s or company’s risk management process has simply appropriated
other people’s intellectual property. Demand proof before you trust your project, program, or
proposal to a consultant or company making such claims! What’s really unique about their risk
management process, what has the consultant or company actually developed and
published, and what substantiation do they have for their claims? Dr. Conrow has served 50+ times as a risk
manager and one-on-one mentor to risk managers covering all facets of project
risk management and related fields where he was responsible for implementing
and making risk management work daily on a wide variety of programs and
proposals. Dr. Conrow has
written/re-written/edited scores of Risk Management Plans and hundreds of risk
handling plans for Government and industry.
We’ve made a variety of advances in risk management process development,
implementation, and documentation that are known by our clients and discussed
in professional forums. Some of the risk
management process innovations that we can publically state include:
·
Developing a unique, structured approach to identify differences between
risk and opportunity management, and discussing limitations of opportunity
management.
·
Developing and applying a unique analytical framework that, together
with the dominant variables, predicts the nature of risks likely present in a
given industry.
·
A 25+ year focus on key project ground rules and assumptions that
should be documented in the Risk Management Plan.
·
Developed a structured approach for selecting and implementing the
“best” risk identification strategy.
·
A 25+ year focus on explicitly addressing integration risk and its
various aspects.
·
A breakout of technical risk into a variety of components, which helps
to avoid missing potential risks that later become problems.
·
Led a 25+ year campaign identifying errors resulting from invalid
mathematical operations performed on results obtained from ordinal risk scales
(which was originally pushed by a major aerospace prime contractor). In
addition, I developed a variety of approaches for working with ordinal scales
that don’t violate underlying mathematical and statistical principals.
·
Exposing substantial flaws in commonly used probability of occurrence
risk analysis scales and developing superior scales that can both reduce
scoring errors, and increase the accuracy of risk analyses.
·
Exposed substantial flaws in assumptions commonly used with Technology
Readiness Levels, and developed a unique approach to correct these flaws.
·
Testing the validity of “built-in” probability distributions contained
in Monte Carlo simulations used in risk analyses.
·
Exploring bias errors and potential solutions in selecting specific
probability distributions.
·
Development and use of test cases to debug and validate Monte Carlo
simulations.
·
Development and use of a structured approach for selecting the “best” risk
handling strategy.
·
Development and use of tailored metrics for risk monitoring.
·
Implementing a feedback loop in a widely used risk management process
(together with more than 50 technical changes in the supporting documentation).
·
Correcting dozens of errors in another widely used risk management
process.
We
have more than 35 years of experience in helping clients develop and implement
risk management, project management, systems engineering, acquisition strategy,
and other management and technical solutions across a variety of
industries. We also have more than 175
professional presentations, papers, book, and related publications in risk
management, project management, systems engineering, and related fields, including
papers that have won awards at national conferences. Why trust your project, program, or proposal
to anyone else?
What Makes Us Stand Out?
Did
you know that most risk management consultants and trainers have never had
long-term responsibility and accountability to make risk management work on a
real project, program, or proposal? Why
“risk” your project, program, or proposal on people with limited experience and
ability?
We
have both the knowledge and “hands on” experience to effectively help your
team: reduce uncertainty, determine
previously undetected risks, prevent known risks from becoming problems, better
understand your entire risk management process and how it integrates with other
key processes, find potential risk management process shortfalls, and implement
your desired improvements.
We’ve
served more than 50 times as a risk manager and one-on-one mentor to risk
managers covering all facets of project risk management and related disciplines
where we were responsible for implementing and making risk management work
daily on a wide variety of programs.
These risk manager and mentor assignments have lasted from months to
more than one year. In addition, we have
held numerous long-term project management and technical positions reporting
directly to organization executives (to the CEO level), program managers, and
project managers, and have served as project managers on a variety of different
activities. Our “hands on” risk
management, project management, and technical experience with long-term
responsibility and accountability far exceeds that of almost all risk
management consultants and trainers. (We
challenge you to look at and verify their resumes—often people being promoted
as experienced risk management consultants have never served as a risk manager,
or if so only one or two times.) In
addition, we have contributed to and developed risk management policy that is
in widespread use across industry and government, served as high-level industry
and government advisors, served as short-term mentors and advisors, and
received numerous letters of commendation for our work. We have directly saved millions of dollars on
several programs.
We develop
enhancements tailored to your project, program, or proposal based upon our
world-class best practices and almost a thousand documented risk management
lessons learned. And we help you
efficiently bring risk management into your day-to-day project management and
systems engineering processes so that risks can be dealt with before they
become costly problems. This gives you a
long-term risk management solution that you can use on current and future
projects, programs, and proposals—something that most other risk management
consultants and trainers can’t provide.
Some Additional Client Benefits From Using Our Services:
·
We help your
management team create an environment conducive to actively and continuously
performing effective risk management.
·
We work with
your personnel to identify risk management and related process shortfalls and
strengthen the process(es) to improve effectiveness.
·
We help you develop
a suitable risk management process tailored to your project, program, or
proposal that meets/exceeds your expectations.
Your organization can maintain this process; adapt it to other projects,
programs, or proposals; and it will not become obsolete in the future.
·
We evaluate how you’ve integrated risk
management with other key processes, and work with project management and other
team personnel to enhance the effectiveness of each process.
·
We provide
your project, program, or proposal with a suitable set of tailored risk
management tools and techniques that meets/exceeds both your and client
requirements, and can be used by your personnel without outside assistance.
·
We work with
your personnel to develop a tailored risk management implementation approach
that ranges from organizational ownership of the risk management process,
integration with other processes, to roles and responsibilities of key
personnel and teams. This allows you to
better implement risk management in a resource-effective manner on your
application and others within your organization.
·
We work with
your personnel to evaluate existing risks and help you prevent these risks from
adversely impact your project, program, or proposal.
·
We work with your
personnel to develop suitable risk handling plans to prevent risks from
adversely impacting your project or program, and contingency plans in the event
the risk might occur.
How We Helped on the NASA Hyperion Project—One Example:
Background
TRW (now
Northrop Grumman Space Technology) was asked by NASA to develop a highly complex
electro-optical instrument for spaceflight.
The previous contractor defaulted and was about to be terminated by NASA
because of poor risk management. The project was slated for roughly 12 months total (split
equally into 6 months for development and 6 months for integration and testing)
vs. more than 4 years for a normal schedule. NASA told TRW that, if the instrument was
delivered late, it could not be used.
NASA also mentioned that, unless TRW developed and implemented a much
better risk management capability, the contract could be terminated. At the time we started working for TRW, they
were already 2 months into the 6-month development and did not have the
capability to perform comprehensive risk management that was needed on this
project.
Approach
We
developed and tailored a risk management process, documented the process in a
Risk Management Plan, and delivered the plan to TRW in less than three
weeks. We developed risk management
training with inputs from the TRW Project Manager (PM) and his Deputy for
systems engineering, and rolled-out the training to the project team. We worked with the TRW PM and Deputy PM to
foster a conducive environment to perform risk management, and project
personnel to implement the process across the project. We were able to gain the trust and
professional respect of team members and helped and encouraged them to
assimilate risk management principles into their job function. We worked with TRW management and other team
members to identify, analyze, handle, and monitor risks (including conducting 5
comprehensive risk assessments during the next 6 months and helping to develop
risk handling strategies for key risks); met with TRW management, team, and
NASA leads and tracked project risks on almost a daily basis; helped develop
contingency plans as needed; and supported TRW and NASA requests for risk
management documentation and briefings that were presented to numerous high
level managers.
Outcomes
The
instrument was delivered one week ahead of schedule, on budget, and met or
exceeded all performance requirements.
TRW widely implemented the risk management process we developed for
Hyperion across its programs. NASA and
TRW executives stated more than once that we “saved the project!”
More Information
Not every risk management enhancement will lead to such spectacular
results. However, effective risk
management can lead to project success.
(The converse is also true—ineffective risk management can contribute to
project failure as with the previous instrument contractor in the Hyperion
example mentioned above.) We have the
broad experience and knowledge to help you develop, tailor, and implement risk management and
improve the effectiveness of an existing process on a wide variety of projects,
programs, and proposals.
(Note: The information in the Hyperion example and
paper has been publicly released by TRW and NASA, who have also distributed
this material. This release is an
exception to our normal business practice.
We do not discuss our work for clients, nor mention their organization,
with others to help our clients maintain the competitive advantage we
provide. This is quite contrary to most
risk management consultants and companies who commonly list clients and
specific programs in their marketing material.)
Some Recent Client Testimonials
Mission
accomplished. Great work. You made the (risk management) process
effective.
Winning Proposal Manager, multi-billion dollar program
I applaud the Risk Management training (I) just
completed. Bringing in a risk expert
with a supporting text to teach risk fundamentals through a series of meetings
was excellent use of time and money. The
risk foundation laid by Dr. Conrow supplements our company’s Best Practices and
provides the basics for any employee tasked with leading or supporting risk
management on a program. Our company
needs more of this including the next level of Risk Management.
Risk Manager, major aerospace company
The (proposal) experience provided me with a first hand appreciation of your ability to integrate into
the client and proposal team organization and show them the “how” of getting
the risk management sections done. There
is a tendency to delay risk management which frustrates the ability to manage
the process during proposal development.
I think you made great strides in recognizing the obstacles and coming
up with techniques that could enlist attention to the risk management effort.
Retired Aerospace Industry Executive and Senior Consultant
It was a pleasure to work with you. One of the best
risk management experiences that I've had on a proposal. Your templates and
guidance were much appreciated. Expectations clear. First risk leader to
acknowledge the inherent parallelism in a risk walkdown
approach that I've typically used on larger programs but found difficult to
visually capture. Thanks again.
Senior Program Manager, major aerospace company
Thanks for all of your insight. Concepts presented during each session were
immediately applicable upon return to work.
The course laid a good foundation from the basic steps of risk
management to the subtleties of working the details and watching out for the
pitfalls.
Risk Manager, multi-billion dollar program
Your experience and patience helped draw out key risk
management issues that needed to be examined on our program.
Senior Engineering Manager, major engineering corporation
The risk management training provided by Dr. Conrow
were immensely beneficial to all participants, as we all have learned a great
deal from Dr. Conrow. His class materials were based on his extensive risk
management knowledge from performing risk management on a wide variety of
programs. He taught participants with his insights, including hundreds of tips
to succeed and traps to avoid. We can directly apply what we've learned from
his classes to make virtually any risk management process more effective. Far
from using an "ivory tower" approach, he framed problems and
potential solutions in easy to understand language, and he was very helpful in
working with program personnel to implement approved changes.
Risk
Manager, multi-billion dollar program
For Additional Information
Please call us and visit the
links below to learn more about how we can help your organization and
project. We’ll provide you
with 30 minutes of consulting time at no charge to better understand your risk
management concerns and how you can increase the likelihood of delivering
products within budget, on schedule, and meeting performance requirements.
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Links to Project Risk Management Services |
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Home Page |
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Second Edition of Dr. Conrow's Risk Management Book with Reviews |
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Risk Management e-Interview with International Council on Systems Engineering |
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Links to Other Services |
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Please contact us about
these and related services tailored to your needs.
This web site owned and operated by:
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Dr. Edmund H. Conrow, CMC, CRM, PMP |
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Reproduction or any other use of this material is prohibited
without written permission.
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This material is Copyright © 2000-2015 by
Edmund H. Conrow, All Rights Reserved
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