Identifying and Managing Project Risk: Essential Tools for Failure-Proofing Your Project

This book is excellent in several perspectives; it walks you through detailed steps in managing project risks, and, at the same time, it relates contents to real life by mapping risk management to one of the world’s most difficult projects, Panama Canal.

In a well-structured, properly written and easily understood format, Tom Kendrick explains how to identify, analyze, plan responses for, and control project risks. Using project’s triple constraints (scope, schedule and resources/cost) as a road map, the book breaks down the risk management efforts into manageable pieces. It provides various down-to-earth tools and techniques to bring failure-prone projects to success.

I like how the book maps each chapter’s contents to pitfalls or successes that took place during the Panama Canal project in the early twentieth century. In addition to that, I like how, throughout the book, Kendrick stresses on prudent change management and effective communication to failure-proof any project.

The appendix of the book is an amazing collection of project risks that have been logged in the Project Experience Risk information Library (PERIL) database. This can be utilized as a starting point for any PM embarking on risk identification in the three dimensions of scope, schedule and resources/cost.

The book is a good reference to any professional who intends to understand how project risks are dealt with, and even for those who are planning to sit for the PMI-RMP exam.