How to Manage Project Opportunity and Risk. Why Uncertainty Management can be a Much Better Approach than Risk Management

Since I wrote the Foreword for the second edition of this book, risk management processes have become much more widely used, but controversy about what should be done and how best to do it has grown. Managing risk is a risky business. Chapman and Ward provide an in-depth explanation of why it is important to understand and manage underlying uncertainty in all its forms, in order to realise opportunities more fully and enhance corporate performance. They show what best practice should look like. The implications go well beyond the conventional wisdom of project risk management, providing an enlightening new perspective. —Professor Tony M. Ridley Imperial College London, Past President, Institution of Civil Engineers Chris Chapman and Stephen Ward continue to educate the profession with this masterful exposition of the differences between, and the potentials for combinations of, risk, uncertainty and opportunity. Particularly welcome is the way they integrate this trio into the project lifecycle – the bedrock of project management control and organization. —Peter W.G. Morris Head of School and Professor of Construction and Project Management University College London Chris Chapman and Stephen Ward’s books on Project Risk Management have been an essential part of my repertoire for twenty years, and they are top of my recommended reading for the courses I do on that subject. In this book they have enhanced their previous work to focus on uncertainty management and emphasise more strongly opportunities for improving project performance, rather then just identifying what can go wrong. A structured process is an essential part of managing project uncertainty, and their process is one of the most powerful. This book will be added to my repertoire. —Rodney Turner Professor of Project Management, SKEMA Business School Lille A profoundly important book. With How to Manage Project Opportunity and Risk, Chris Chapman and Stephen Ward take a good thing and make it better. Members of the project management profession have been influenced for years by their insights into project risk management. With this latest instalment the authors demonstrate that risk and uncertainty needn’t be dreaded; in fact, the reverse side of the ‘risk coin’ has always been opportunity. My sincere appreciation to Chapman and Ward for turning this particular coin over and showing readers, academic and practitioner alike, the opportunity embedded in managing projects. —Jeffrey K. Pinto Andrew Morrow and Elizabeth Lee Black Chair in Management of Technology Sam and Irene Black School of Business, Penn State Erie