Mastering Project Uncertainty

Book excerpt: Uncertainty permeates every thinkable aspect of project work and mastering information awareness and availability is the key to controlling benefits, budgets, and timelines. This book offers a theoretical framework and practical guidelines to systematically minimize uncertainty, thereby increasing the chances of project success. To paraphrase Henry Ford, transitioning from traditional risk management to mastering project uncertainty implies abandoning the quest for faster horses in favor of driving cars toward your project’s destination. This book presents the road map to this transition, with Part I providing a theoretical foundation for uncertainty management using systems thinking. Part II introduces strategies supported by practical techniques to master uncertainty through: 1. Raising information awareness 2. Increasing information availability 3. Improving the effective use of information 4. Maximizing information efficiency. This book’s combined theoretical and highly practical approach, is essential reading for scholars, academics, business leaders, project managers, strategists, and policymakers to bring the organization’s vision for a sustainable future to life.