Imagine a situation where you have been assigned with a project that is quite similar to the one you had previously completed successfully. Lesson learned for that successfully completed project is full of good practices and methodologies utilize during that project execution.

So, the question here is that since you have to perform same sort of things again would you adopt the same processes, methodologies and tools etc.? The clear answer would be a firm “yes”, the same success formula should be adopted.

Well, my next question is that if we do the same things, would there be any space for improvement? If yes, then in which area? You would not certainly look to change or experiment with things on the right path. So in my opinion, we are only left with project risks to experiment with.

Risks are definitely in areas that are not certain but at the same time they have good probability to happen. There is not much that you can do with risks once they are planned but there are two things on which a project manager should focus to perform experiment; the first thing is that a project manager can reduce the probability of the risks being triggered especially working on the reasons that triggered the risk last time. Reasons related to internal processes and tools etc. are something that can always be improved. The second thing is that the impact can be reduced through lesson learned and other feedback and experiences from the previous projects.

So to summarize the discussion, project risks can be termed as area where a project manager can experiment for improvement of projects that are related to domain explored and experienced.

The core purpose to introduce this completely new phenomenon of “Experimenting on Risks” is to identify and avoid instinctive potential hazards that by default exist in both negative and positive risks which encompass the tendency to act as viral vectors for any project. The learning and results of such experiments will help to evolve new safety measures, to design efficiency in the project working environment and finally to reduce the probability and impact of the negative risks and increase the opportunity and output of the positive risks.

OGMC provides a wide range of training and services to help a project manager to learn and improve on methodologies and processes to add to the project success.