by
Yasser Ali , Program Manager , Orange Business Services
The simple answer is RISK MANAGEMENT
Risk management is essential in any project, and as per the PMI methodology, you can follow the following steps to manage risks: 1- Plan for Risk management
determine the risk categories, responsibilities, budget, reporting formats..etc 2- Identify risks
through analyzing all possible risks in your project in different areas, and you do that with assistance of your team 3- Qualitative analysis
by determining the probability and impact of each individual risk 4- Quantitative analysis
by giving a numerical value for each risk in order to give them a rank 5- Plan risk response
there are many ways to plan for your response like:
avoid the risk, or mitigate it by taking some contingent actions, or transfer it to another party (subcontractor or insurance), or just accept it after planning what you will do next. 6- Control Risk
and this is done through out the project to make sure that your risk plan is followed.
However, with all of that, we may face unexpected risk as you said that were not planned, and the best way to overcome this is to have a contingency buffers for time and cost, that will give you flexibility to re-plan and take the corrective actions.
One important tip, that I would suggest, is to use repetitive status meetings with your team, in order to be always aware of the progress of your project, and to use forecasting techniques that may help in predicting important information for your project.
