respond to all

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At least in my lifetime I have never seen a team project or any sort of plan go exactly as it was drawn up. It never happens. Something always goes wrong. But sometimes you can plan for those things and use your experience to avoid problems that have happened in the past.

The most used risk response strategy that I have seen is risk avoidance. Most people try to avoid as much risk as they can. According to our book risk avoidance is eliminating a specific threat, by eliminating its causes (Schwalbe, 2014). But in my current profession risk is inherent in the military way of life. We would love to avoid all risk but realize that is impossible. So we preach to avoid all unnecessary risk.

In 1968 at Bien Hoa Air Base, Vietnam during a storm of enemy fire, Sergeant Piazza and his team took the ultimate risk. Their lives. They waded through an unstoppable barrage of enemy fire in order to get to their teammates at a bunker and resupply them. When the officer in charge was killed Piazza took command and rallied his troops. His team battled the onslaught for over 8 hours. They held their position, and stopped the onslaught from advancing, and saved countless lives during the process. For his devotion to duty, Sergeant Piazza received the Silver Star.

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Risk is inherent in everything that we do. That is equally true for the projects we manage. Most organizations deal with this by creating a risk management plan. According to Schwalbe (2014) a risk management plan are document that outlines the procedures for managing risk throughout the project. No one can plan for every possible problem that can happen in a project so during the project so when problem arise that threatens the objectives of the project the team takes steps to enhance opportunities and reduce threats. This leads to updates to the project management plan.

Major organizations always want to improve their business, and they tend to use IT projects to do this. One company that did this was the Levi Strauss company; they had an antiquated IT system and wanted to have one SAP System (Flyvbjerg, Budzier, 2011). The risk to the company seemed small, and it was projected to be $ 5 million. As the project started soon their major customer Walmart requested that ye must be able to interface with their supply system. Because of insignificant financial reporting and internal controls, the company was forced to restate quarterly and annual results (Flyvbjerg, Budzier, 011). During the switch over the company was not able to fill any orders to their distribution chain for a week. This caused the Levi Strauss company to take a $ 192.5 million charge because of the project. This project was a risk, and because of this project the chief information officer was forced to resigned.

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•Detail the use of a risk response strategy you have experienced or read about. A risk response strategy that seems reasonable from the readings is risk exploitation as it requires doing whatever it takes to ensure that the positive risk happens (Schwalbe, 2012, p. 467). An example of this is when we conducted a project which involved potentially moving a work center to a new location. The team took the risks of moving the work center knowing the risks involved would bring a positive outcome for throughput and readiness. The team ensured that all risks were mitigated prior to implementing the change. This can also be considered as risk acceptance is it also applies to positive risks when the project team does not take action toward a risk (Schwalbe, 2012, p. 467). The team could have not done anything prior to the move and just accepted the risk as a positive change without being compelled to do anything extra.

•Give an example of any team that took risks and explain the outcome.

An example of a team that took risks was on an improvement project that involved changing the process to wash the aircraft. At the time there wasn’t a dedicated team to wash aircraft during their schedule timeframe and people were often gathered at the last minute. The process change required a specific work center to conduct the washes as it was ultimately their responsibility. The risk came on whether the work center would accept the change in process and whether the team would to continue to push for this change. Ultimately the risk was taken such as using risk exploitation and the improvement project was a success as detailed instructions and schedule were also incorporated to make the process easier.