Suggest the issues that could have developed had the team not had taken a risk plan
Within a Satellite Development Project, new technology, with often untested outcomes, is involved. In the absence of a risk plan, the technology included in this project could have generated unexpected results that might have compromised the project. As the project’s description informs, the satellite development project implied many unknowns with variables that stretched across manufacture, supply chain system integration, etc. (Lavigne, n.d.). With the high amount of unknown factors, many aspects could have gone wrong in the project, which could have endangered its success. Risk refers to uncertainty regarding future events and outcomes, expressing “the likelihood and impact of an event with the potential to influence the achievement of an organization’s objectives” (Berg, 2010, p. 79). Without a risk plan, namely a plan to identify, assess and manage the risks that could have influenced the course of action, the project’s objectives might have not been achieved, according to this definition.
The identification of a potential risk is followed by the assessment of impact of that risk, namely evaluating how the threat can affect the company, which next requires a risk management approach to preventing the risk (Rad & Levin, 2003). In delineating the solutions for solving the identified risks, the new approaches could generate or identify new risks for other parts of the project (Berg, 2010). Hence, without the identification, assessment and management of risks, the organization working on the satellite project would have been vulnerable to potential threats coming from different areas, all posing specific risk potential on conducting various aspects of the projects. Nevertheless, considering that the activities are linked and influence to one another, any unidentified risk that could have perturbed one activity would have eventually affected the entire project. The potential losses would not have been identified and the project would not have reached its full potential (Giunipero & Eltantawy, 2003).
Justify the value of risk plan considering the time, effort, cost, and resources it took to develop such a plan
Risk management can imply a considerable amount of time and effort devoted to identifying, assessing and reducing the impact of risks. It can be considered as irrelevant spending time and effort for identifying risks on regular projects, which reflect control – oriented manager who seek short – term results (Giunipero & Eltantawy, 2003). Furthermore, changing a project’s coordinates too often due to identified risks might overturn or delay advancements, being time consuming, as their identification and management requires following a strict procedure (Berg, 2010; Giunipero & Eltantawy, 2003).
Nevertheless, the satellite development project is not a regular one, but one that demands an insightful analytical approach. In this case, the risk plan is justified and the time, effort, cost and resources used to develop it were reasonable, considering the threats that were mitigated. All these organizational assets were integrated in the satellite development project for creating a visibility on the risks the threatened the achievement of the objectives. More than this, the risk plan allowed the project team to fit into the time and budget constraints, by reducing the uncertainties that would require additional tests and overruns (Lavigne, n.d.).
Assess how to determine the level of risk management appropriate for a project
Existent studies agree that an overly punctilious risk management plan can be detrimental to the project (Collier, 2009; Giunipero & Eltantawy, 2003). An excessive risk management focus can jeopardize the even initiation of the project, out of too much consideration for what might go wrong, which might also lead to missing important opportunities (Collier, 2009). Nevertheless, the mere meaning of risk implies not solely the threats and the bad things that could occur along a project, but also the positive outcomes and the opportunities, as they all fall in the category of uncertain events. While it is important to be careful in identifying unpredicted events that might jeopardize the project in terms of missing deadlines or crossing over the budget, it is recommended a balanced consideration of risk versus project implementation (Collier, 2009).
For the satellite development project, risk identification and assessment is an important task, but it is even more important to actually implement the project with all it implies. As the analyzed case study informs, there are monthly meetings organized for discussing the reported risks, as identified by various members of the project and introduced in the Risk Management Worksheet created for the project. While some identified risks can await one month for being assessed and managed, others cannot be postponed, requiring immediate assistance, as they might threaten the implementation of current or future activities. A weekly review of the risks would be more appropriate for this project, considering its technical nature. However, such situations might be exceptions that require the project team to act upon. Nonetheless, they should not be instituted as a norm, otherwise the project would be very time consuming and costly, failing to reach the objective of the risk plan, which is to prevent time and cost overruns.
In establishing the level of risk management appropriate for this project, there should be created the Gaant charter of the activities first. Based on this charter, depending on the magnitude of each activity and its implication for the overall project, there should be appointed a corresponding time for risk identification, assessment and management. However, the problem with this approach is that not all risk can be quantified. A more suited approach would be to assign a risk manager, responsible for balancing the risks against the project activities, in order to allow the activities to flow, while keeping the risks under control. With this level of involvement, there is assured that risk management is integrated throughout the project, although this component of the project does not hamper the implementation of the other project components.
Imagine the team working on the satellite development project was a virtual team in which team members were unable to meet in person
In the nowadays business world, virtual teams no longer represent a rarity, describing the way many of the 21st century organizations operate. Like the regular project team, working in the same physical environment, virtual teams also need to comply with the risk management principles, which imply routine risk identification, activities monitoring, free flow of information, classify the risks, calculating their impact and mitigating them (Rad & Levin, 2003). The sole difference is that, instead of meeting face to face, they communicate virtually, through emails, phone calls or video conference.
Nevertheless, in the case of virtual teams there must be admitted the existence of challenging factors. The distance or time difference can cause communication ruptures, or the delayed information of team members from other locations upon very recent updates. Furthermore, working virtually is also associated with disengagement and demotivation, which, in the case of risk management might make virtual team members to treat superficially their responsibility in reporting, assessing or mitigating the risks (Rad & Levin, 2003). Therefore, virtual team is a risk in itself for the risk management, but in the end, it is the project manager’s responsibility to coordinate the team, virtually or not, and to ensure that communication flows and the risk management procedures are respected.
Explain the expected impact on the project and suggest 2 (two) ways the team could maintain its current goal in both planning and execution
With the precautions taken to manage risks throughout the project, the expected impact is to develop and deliver the satellite as scheduled, respecting the timeline and the budgets for the overall project. As the analyzed case indicates, the risk was approached in an integrated manner, in order to highlight how a risk situation identified in a specific activity could influence others. While the integrated approach is sustainable for the project, deciding during only one planning day how the risks would be approached could result in situational changes, which were not considered during the planning process.
One suggestion for the planning phase is to keep a procedure for managing risks, while also maintaining flexibility in dealing with them, as the nature of specific risks might not have been foreseen in the planning phase and could require another approach. This suggestion is also available for the execution phase, as a flexible approach to risks would generate suitable responses. This would contribute to maintaining the current goal of the project, delivering a quality result in the established time and budget.
In the execution phase, the team should meet more often for reporting and discussing the risk management. Instead of a monthly meeting, a weekly meeting would allow more transparence and more promptly interventions on mitigating risks. Keeping the risks under control, by checking their status on a weekly basis would allow the team to maintain its current goal.
References
Berg, H.P. (2010) Risk management: Procedures, methods and experiences. RT&A 1(2): 79 – 95.
Collier, P. M. (2009) Fundamentals of risk management for accountants and managers. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Giunipero, L.C. & Eltantawy, A. (2003) Securing the upstream supply chain: A risk management approach. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management. 34(9): 698-713.
Lavigne, L. (n.d.) Project management in action. Course material.
Rad, P. & Levin, G. (2003) Achieving project management success using virtual teams. Boca Raton: J. Ross Publishing, Inc.
