Risk and Triage

Wine, when work becomes culture

Proposing new ideas is not an easy task. Once the new concept has been delivered, the labor’s fatigue pushes for the absolute. To be good, an idea – like a good wine – needs to be produced and distributed just a little less than the asked quantity. It is not only a good policy for keeping a good price in the right market’s slice. This is an excellent remedy against the temptation of water it down.

The advantages of triage in Risk Management

Triage was credited to Napoleon’s Chief Surgeon Baron Larrey . It was a process for  classifying the wounded in a battle field on the importance of their medical status. Lesser crippling the wound, quicker the medical aid offered, independently of the rank. Nowadays, this technique is still working using a tag to start the process beginning with an immediate evaluation made by rescuers (usually paramedics).

In his post David Hilson is proposing the adoption of this technique for simplifying the Risk Management.

Using 3-P for a quick classification

Three labels indicate the risk’s probability:

1. proven
2. probable
3. possible

The spearhead of his argumentation is about the powerful of simplicity. Instead of complex – sometimes questionable – evaluations, once a risk is correctly classified into one of the three categories confronting it with a threshold is enough for deciding the resources’ allocation (for further analysis, I suppose).

The positive side

The idea of leaving the judgment the choice’s potential damage (or opportunity) to the people on the field (starting from “Peer Review”), in my opinion, has a strong value for two reasons:

1. They have the direct knowledge of the situation. It is a biased view; however, there are no lenses to deform the view.
2. It increases the consciousness and improves the involvement of producers in the Risk (Project) Management.

Terms like proven, probable and possible are easily referred to the technology. A quick glance is sufficient for making a decision that can be transmitted with no noise (messages becoming garbled when going up in the management’s responsibility chain).

In these situations, the categorization of the probability as the impact on the budget is made easier by the estimation of the required time multiple the hourly tariff(s) of the people involved. Given the necessary budget tolerance (it could be expressed in days), the decision process will be quick (yes we can try because the potential damage is lower than our budget allowance).

The same logic can be applied for preparing the Business Case. In order to motivate deep, lengthy and costly analysis, a quick and efficient choice shall be carried through. Nonetheless, this does not exclude the Risk Analysis that remains unavoidable, once the strategy has been decided.

Some limits

David, like many other proposers of “new techniques” (to be confronted with the existing standards like Prince2 or PMI) offers a new exclusive vision. My humble approach is more focused on improving the existing principles. Either through the official channels or much more informal, by mixing the daily applications with some interesting discussions in the forums.

I have no problem to confess that my professional efforts are aimed to feed my family. This requires a lot of effort in understanding what the customer wants and which the best techniques available on the market are. A lower price (smartly called simplicity) is not always sufficient for granting an acceptable result.

Let me resuming the missing points of this concept, were it barely applied to a relevant project:

1. Triage born as first aid technique. This assumes that all patients have the same nature (it is easy making confrontations on the same principles. All risks affecting the projects do not share the same nature (see the Risk’s List), so that pairing a financial risk (payments’ delay) with a technical one (wrong architecture) is not a simple matter. This has to be encased in a strategy.
2. Working out each risk’s cost is needed for allocating the financial reserves. These have to be calculated and spread (using Bayes) considering the occurrence of events during the project’s time (the simple sum of each single reserve makes almost impossible to finance any project).
3. Financial means are not the only ones. Skilled people are much more important and much less easy to be allocated (considering that multi-tasking adds another strain to a person facing an already difficult situation).
4. There are four possible actions for mitigating risks (see previous posts and DoD docs- courtesy of Herding Cats). Each risk needs to be analyzed and then framed in the proper plan that includes:

1. Setting a threshold, finding the event’s trigger.
2. Appointing the person responsible for monitoring each trend.
3. Preparing the possible tactics (strategies) for issuing the proposal for new plans.

Conclusion

David offers us a good arrow for our quivers. Bigger and more complex are the challenges, more welcome is the availability of new tools. Nevertheless, the honest fatigue required to conceive an idea should not refrain from enjoying a confrontation with the existing ones.

“If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it”