QUESTIONS

Question 1. What could you do as a Project Manager to ensure Black Swan's got the attention they should? Imagine a scenario where you're talking to senior management to get them to understand the importance.

Question 2. Which risks that you listed in that response would be considered Black Swans? Please explain why.

BLACK SWANS

In this book, we have been referring to the worst 20 percent of the risks in the PERIL database as black swans. These "large-impact, hard-to-predict, rare events" caused at least three months of schedule slip, and 53 of these most damaging 206 risks, a bit more than a quarter, were resource risks. As with the black swans as a whole, the most severe of the resource risks account for about half of the total measured impact. The details are given in the table on the next page.

As can be seen in the table, the black swan resource risks were distributed unevenly. The motivation and money categories represent a much higher portion of the total, with several categories near the average of 50 percent, and several of the people-related risk categories much lower.

Not surprisingly, money issues were a substantial portion of the black swan resource risks. Fifteen cases, almost a third of the risks reported in this category, were in this group. Nearly all involved either underfunded projects or severe cutbacks in budgets, including such situations as:

• Subject-matter experts were let go to save money.
• Due to a layoff, no writer was immediately available, so approval was delayed.
• Project was cut back, delayed fixes cost a lot of money, and needed resources were assigned to other work.
• Project budget was restricted to the bare minimum estimated.
• There were large funding cutbacks (66 percent of project team).

There were also 17 outsourcing black swan risks. Sixteen were due to late or poor output, with these among them: 

A key supplier was purchased by another company and reorganized. Project was forced to find a new supplier.

• Research and development were outsourced, but the relationship was not managed well, and all work ultimately had to be redone.
• Contract manufacturer failed to deliver on time.
• Changes were agreed to, but the supplier shipped late and deliverables did not work.
• Components were delayed, and contractors were committed to other work and were able to work only part time.

There was also a black swan outsourcing risk due to a delayed start when settling the terms of the agreement and negotiating the contracts took months, causing the project to begin late.

There were 21 additional black swan people risks. This category had the largest total number of these severe risks, but it also represented a smaller proportion of the impact.

Permanent staff loss also caused a lot of pain and led the list of black swan people risks with nine. Here are a few examples:

• Expert medical specialist was no longer available.
• Product owner having unique knowledge left the company.
• Manager quit his job because of his mother's illness.

Although the four black swan risks associated with motivation were less than half of all the motivation risks, they accounted for nearly three-quarters of the impact from this subcategory. These risks were:

• Management mandated the project but never got team buy-in.
• Programmers were volunteers, and ultimately all of them quit.
• Staff got along poorly and frequently quarreled
• The product manager disliked the project manager.

There were also three black swan project risks due to queuing, causing projects to be slowed by a lack of access to specific resources, for example:

• Key decisions were stalled when no system architect was available.
• Several projects shared only one subject-matter expert.

There were three more major people risks caused by late staffing availability. All were due to people who were trapped on a delayed prior project. Temporary loss of people caused only two black swan risks. Most temporary staff loss situations in the PERIL database were resolved in a lot less than three months.

Answer in 1 page.