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Strategic SWOT for Project Risk Management

1. Standard project management recommends identifying all potential risks and contingency plans, but this takes too much time. 2. Using a Strategic SWOT analysis identifies the key 20% of risks most likely to cause problems by analyzing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. 3. The analysis focuses on the last question - how to overcome weaknesses by taking advantage of opportunities or dealing with threats, which identifies the highest risks.

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Walid Ben Husein
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74 views6 pages

Strategic SWOT for Project Risk Management

1. Standard project management recommends identifying all potential risks and contingency plans, but this takes too much time. 2. Using a Strategic SWOT analysis identifies the key 20% of risks most likely to cause problems by analyzing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. 3. The analysis focuses on the last question - how to overcome weaknesses by taking advantage of opportunities or dealing with threats, which identifies the highest risks.

Uploaded by

Walid Ben Husein
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Identifying project risks

Many standard project management


texts recommend identifying the
potential project risks by asking
what are all the things that
could go wrong?, and then
preparing contingency plans for
every risk identified.
This works very well if you have the
luxury of the time to put into it.
Those of us with time pressures need
Identifying project risks
The Principle tells us that 20% of the
possible risks are the most likely to
cause major problems, so a tool
which can identify these 20% is
valuable.
One such tool is the Strategic
SWOT, which builds on a projects
standard SWOT (strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities, threats)
analysis.
SWOT Analysis
The Strategic SWOT asks 4
questions:
1. How can I use the projects strengths to
take advantage of the opportunties?
2. How can I use the projects strengths to
overcome the threats?
3. What do I need to do to overcome the
weaknesses and take advantage of the
opportunities?
4. What do I need to do to overcome the
SWOT Analysis
The last of these 4 questions is the one which
identifies the key 20% of risks.
Most projects that fail, do so because they
failed to see these vulnerabilities - the risks
that result from combining an internal
weakness with an external threat.
Heres an example. A project weakness may be
poor document security.
SWOT Analysis
The combination of these two points to a key
vulnerability, and some obvious contingency
planning: improve the security of documents
and have a plan in place in case of media leaks.
Apply this analysis to your project now. In one
column list the projects weaknesses. In a
second column list the external threats.
SWOT Analysis
Now look for the key risks: the times when a
weakness can make you really vulnerable to
the threats. Finally, design some contingency
plans to cope with these key risks.

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