Risk management and post project evaluation processes for research and development projects

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1064297 (Table of Contents)

Project risk management has become a popular subject in the last decade, in parallel with the developments in the field of project management to adopt to the uncertain and changing environment. Risk management is the systematic process of identifying, analyzing, andresponding to project risk. Successful project risk management will greatly improve theprobability of project success. It is necessary to learn from risk management activities, for obtaining improvements in the project management process. The post project evaluation process consists of activities performed by a project team at the end of the project to gather information on what worked well and what did not, so that future projects can benefit from that learning. It aims to find out best practices and documenting lessons learned. Risks are the major part of post project evaluations and vice versa. Learning points are easily identified upon risk issues and the risk management process outcomes may provide insights into the weaknesses in the project management processes. Post project evaluation helps in building a knowledge database on possible risks to be used in risk management process. Historical databases may help to manage the risk checklists, create information for estimations and response strategies. Ninety-three R&D projects in an R&D Center of a leading manufacturer in Turkey, were analysed to identify the factors that may affect the project performance and to form a risk checklist as an input to the proposed risk management process for the R&D Center. Then, a risk management process and a post project evaluation process have been designed for the establishment of risk management and organizational learning in the R&D Center. Quantitative risk analysis techniques are not employed in the proposed process. To demonstrate the use of quantitative risk analysis, a mathematical formulation for the expected value of the total project cost has been described, and a hypothetical example has been modelled and simulated using @Risk, a commercial risk analysis software.