Uncertainty Flashcards
Uncertainty
A lock of understanding and awareness of issues, events, paths to follow or solutions to pursue.
Ambiguity
A state of being unclear, having difficulty in identifying the cause of events, or having multiple options from which to choose.
Complexity
A characteristic of a program or project or its environment that is difficult to manage due to human behavior, system behavior, and ambiguity.
Volatility
The possibility for rapid and unpredictable change.
Risk
An uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on one or more project objectives.
Environmental aspects that contribute to uncertainty
Economic factors
Such as volatility in prices, availability of resources, ability to borrow funds and inflation/deflation
Technical considerations
Such as new or emerging technology, complexity associated with systems, and interfaces.
Legal or legislative constraints or requirements
Physical environment as it pertains to safety, weather, and working conditions
Ambiguity associated with current or future conditions
Social and market influences shaped by opinion and media
Political influences, either external or internal to the organization
Options for responding to uncertainty
Gather information
Prepare for multiple outcomes
Set-based design
Build in resilience
Resilience
The ability to adapt and respond quickly to unexpected changes.
Conceptual Ambiguity
The lack of effective understanding
when people use similar terms or arguments in different ways
Situational Ambiguity
When more than one outcome is possible
Having multiple options to solve a problem
Experiments
A well-designed series of experiments can help identify cause-and-effect relationships or, at least, can reduce the amount of ambiguity.
Progressive elaboration
The iterative process of increasing the level of detail in a project management plan as greater amounts of information and more accurate estimates become available.
Prototypes
Can help distinguish the relationships between different variables.
Ways to work with complexity that are systems-based
Decoupling
Simulation
Ways to work with complexity that entail reframing
Diversity - brainstorming with the project team to open up divergent ways of seeing the system
Balance - Balancing the type of data used rather than only using forecasting data or data that reports on the past or lagging indicators provides a broader perspective.
Ways to work with complexity that is process based
Iterate - build iteratively or incrementally
Engage - build in opportunities to get stakeholder engagement
Fail Safe - build in redundancy or elements that can provide a graceful degradation of functionality
Five alternative strategies for dealing with threats
Avoid
Escalate
Transfer
Mitigate
Accept
Avoid as a threat strategy
When the project team acts to eliminate the threat or protect the project from its impact.
Action taken PRO-ACTIVELY –> high control
Escalate as a threat strategy
When a threat is outside the scope of the project or that the proposed response would exceed the project manager’s authority.
Transfer as a threat strategy
Shifting ownership of a threat to a third party to manage the risk and to bear the impact if the threat occurs.
e.g. Car insurance –> risk to 3rd party
Mitigate as a threat strategy
Action is taken to reduce the probability of occurrence and/or impact of a threat.
Note: Early mitigation action is often more effective than trying to repair the damage after the threat has occurred.
Opposite of enhance; e.g. Helmet would (could) mitigate severe head injury
Accept as a threat strategy
Acknowledges the existence of a threat, but no proactive action is planned.
Can include developing a contingency plan that would be triggered if the event occurred OR it can include passive acceptance, which means doing nothing.
Powerless to change –> weather
5 strategies for dealing with Opportunities
Exploit
Escalate
Share
Enhance
Accept
Exploit as an opportunity strategy
The project team acts to ensure that an opportunity occurs.
Make sure that is does happen –> high control
Escalate as an opportunity strategy
Opportunity is outside the scope of the project or that the proposed response would exceed the project manager’s authority.
Share as an opportunity strategy
Involves allocating ownership of an opportunity to a third party who is best able to capture the benefit of that opportunity.
Enhance as an opportunity strategy
The project team acts to increase the probability of occurrence or impact of an opportunity.
Accept as an opportunity strategy
Acknowledge its existence but no proactive action is planned.
