Chaos to Clarity; The Tao of Risk Management will be hitting the streets in the Fall of 2014. Chaos to Clarity is a practical guide to risk management that brings clarity to the murky practice of risk management. Tao is commonly thought of as a series of principles to live by which help frame and demystify risk management.
As a Quality Assurance Manager, I conducted more than 60 project assessments since the late 1990s and am continually amazed by the endless failures of risk management in the IT industry. Project managers with comprehensive risk management training still had projects fail because of ineffective risk management. After several years of training project managers and conducting project assessments on failed projects, I was forced to conclude that the risk management processes touted by various professionals and standards organizations simply do not work. Risk management processes established by the Project Management Institute (PMI), the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the Australia – New Zealand (AS/NZS) standards organization are reasonable processes however; three areas these standards organizations neglect are 1) how to properly identify risks, 2) how to objectively quantify risk impact 3) how to establish and maintain risk models so that future projects can benefit from both the successes and failures of risk management.
Chaos to Clarity presents a risk management approach I developed based on industry standards and nearly three decades of slogging through the trenches as a Project Manager. My approach is targeted toward the IT industry because technology touches nearly every aspect of our professional lives in some manner. However, the information contained in this book easily translates to nearly any industry and can be applied to many non-technical situations and environments. This standards based approach provides the tools and techniques needed to properly identify risks and objectively quantify risk impact so risks can be effectively managed. Chaos to Clarity also includes processes required to deliver true value to individuals and organizations through effective risk management.
