The Agile Manager has a great post on One-Way Risk and Robustness of IT Projects.  It calls for “more robustness in risk management” within IT projects.  However, it’s critical of risk management that is “limited to maintaining a ‘risks and issues’ log, so it’s never more than an adjunct to our plan”.

I like the implication that risk management should be conceptually equal to the project plan within the management framework.  The reasoning appears to be that the project plan is necessary but not sufficient for the success of IT projects because of inherent uncertainty in these types of projects.  In particularly there is reference to project plans being treated to as “point projections – as opposed to probabilistic projections – of what we will do, when we will be done and how much it will cost”.

I would never criticise the concept of schedule management but we shouldn’t see risk management as just an ‘adjunct to our plan’ but rather something that should be managed as robustly as the schedule elements that are embedded in the plan.  Incidentally, project management says this in theory too – but the practice is sometimes lacking.

Of course, I would also include architecture at the same level of schedule and risk management and not place architecture management as just an ‘adjunct to our plan’.

(Via The Agile Manager.)