Risky Business

Captain Quentin here of the QUBEship Enterprise II with a risky tale to tell.?

Last year I was Captain of QUBEship Enterprise I. All was going well. I managed the ship, in part, by having a team that recorded things that might go wrong and even the impact?and likelihood of these things going wrong. We were very proud of our efforts and at our monthly review meeting discussed, in great depth, what we would do in the event of these things happening.?

Until....

One day we noticed cables getting chewed. After some investigation we were able to confirm that we had an Alien on board. We thought it was probably low impact (only seemed to be one of them) and sent out Pete and Sue to go and find it.

?"Make sure you cover the whole ship" I said.?

Unfortunately it was a big ship which meant Pete and Sue had to split up at some point. It?was Pete?that found the Alien only to find his stun gun was out of stuns and so he became the Alien's breakfast. Sue hasn't quite recovered from finding Pete's boots.

We had a quick panic meeting and decided this needed all our resources thrown at it so dispatched the A team and the biggest?of stun guns. They found the Alien and brought it back to the central lab, locked it up and went out for congratulatory?Pizza. I even joined them. We had a great evening but it seemed we were celebrating too soon. Unfortunately we had left the undergrad Ali in charge. Ali liked to smoke 'herbal' cigarettes and fell asleep on duty. The Alien escaped and sadly Sue was the one to discover?Ali's 'leftovers'. Sue is still signed off from work.

Next we decided to throw all our budget at it so went to IT who dropped all other projects to focus on?building a track and trace system. The system worked (ish) but took so long to build that once it was live?we discovered that the Alien had multiplied and thousands of aliens had now taken over the entire ship. And because IT were solely focused on this new system all the other back up systems hadn't been upgraded so didn't work anymore. And so the only thing left to do was to get into the emergency escape rocket and blow up the QUBEship Enterprise I.?

Luckily I am here still to tell the tale. The same can't really be said for Pete, Ali and Sue though.?The tale that all Hollywood alien movies have told us about how to manage risk (ie don't do what they do in the films or what we did last year).

1. Identify the Alien

2. Kill it dead straight away!- don't split up your resources focus them on Fixing the danger (it) Now!

3. If you can't kill it dead, contain it...

4. Monitor it closely (put the best person in charge). Don't celebrate yet...

5. Have a Plan B, like blowing up the space ship ready to go. So if it does escape... *BOOM!*

Risk registers don't manage risk. Risk review meetings don't manage risks. Likelihood and probability matrix don't manage risk.?But if you follow steps 1-5, agree the actions for each step, add the actions to your project plan - not to spreadsheet that might get looked at once a month - and do the actions immediately?to kill the alien dead, you will find that your project is much less risky and you will deliver much more effectively, spend less money and avoid being derailed too often.

The only downside is that you will eliminate risks early in the game and therefore?it's unlikely you will need to blow up the spaceship which may give the impression you have just got lucky with an easy project rather than others noticing that you are just fully in control at all times. But instead of insisting otherwise, why not just tell them a little story but about how Hollywood taught us how to manage risk. And then you can all go out for celebratory pizza safe in the knowledge that you have nothing to fear from the Aliens.?