Reference no: EM133349170

Question: You have just been hired as a project manager for a large company, and have been assigned to manage Project lcarus, a mission-critical project which needs to be completed within a fixed deadline. While the organization is large and runs many projects, it has never paid attention to project management best practices. The manager who hired you told you that senior management has indicated they want to change that, as a couple of big projects started in the past two years failed spectacularly. "We've hired you and a couple of other PMP-certified project managers because the CEO was furious about those projects," he confides. "We need to develop better processes and need people like you to get us moving in the right direction. " You take your manager's words to heart as you start planning efforts on Project lcarus. You work with your project team to develop project management plans in all of the knowledge areas. This includes a risk management plan which requires you to sit down with project stakeholders to identify and analyze risks qualitatively and quantitatively. You hold the first risk identification session and appoint yourself to be the facilitator. ln attendance are several senior managers who are major stakeholders in the project. You sent out an agenda before the meeting and included a detailed description of the risk identification and analysis approaches you are prescribing, which follow PMBOK process guidelines. As you start the meeting, one of the senior managers raises his hand. "l feell have to speak up before we start this meeting. l've talked this over with a couple of the other managers, and we are NOT comfortable with this process. Why are you asking us to identify threats to the project and estimate their impact and likelihood? We're not statisticians and we're not here to fail - we need to get this work done. lt seems like you are expecting us to come up with reasons why we shouldn't be undertaking this project at all. Are you trying to get management to kill this project?" How would you respond to the manager's remarks?