SAP BW Tutorial Best Practice on Project Management Risk Register

Table of Contents

A Project Manager Tutorial On Risk Management

 

Congratulations! According to the Project Charter, you have just been named SAP Project Manager on the new corporate wide global deployment of the SAP BW 3.5 to SAP BI 7.x Upgrade Project.

In addition, the Project Sponsor has been reading a lot about Business Objects Dashboards and SAP HANA lately and wants you to add these in the upgrade.

 

Not only that, you have been informed that this will be a 3 month project with a possible extension to 6 months.

Is it time to panic yet?

 

Oh yeah, big time.

So what should you do?

 

One has to ask, does a 50 story high rise building take longer to plan and build than a 1 story home? Is this project a 50 story building or a single family home? Is 3 months enough time?

Well there are obviously some risks that you can already identify in the scope and sizing of the project that will have an impact on project duration estimation (who came up with that 3 month number anyway).

In any project, how to estimate project cost and durations is a pretty common task.

 

It is the Project Managers responsibility to do this estimation. The project manager has tools and techniques available for doing this.

Direct hands-on personal experience being one (but not the only method) of the most important inputs to the estimation process. I will discuss project costing and estimation and how to properly do that in great detail later on in this SAP BW tutorial series.

Project Risk Management 

Managing Risk is a Constant Balancing Act

Project Management Risk Log

In any project, big or small, there are always project unknowns (Risks) and major risk factors encountered along the way that will contribute to the success or failure of your project. No one wants to be leading a failing project.

Avoid letting your project get into trouble to begin with. What I tell you next may seem like a waste of your time, but I have found it to be helpful to reduce project risk and to increase project success rates.

 

As a project manager a lot of unknowns (Risks) are spinning around in your mind because you may not have been familiar with that particular business area or this or that piece of technology. This is pretty common. No one person can know everything. It takes whole company participation to successfully complete a project.

So what is one thing you should do today with the Risks you have identified so far?

Keeping a Project Risk Register is a recommended Project Management Best Practice you should immediately start and maintain throughout the life of your project.

A Risk Register is simply a list of known or perceived Risks that you are aware of. The Risk Register will grow throughout the project life cycle as you encounter new risks.

There are many Risk Register Templates that you can use. At a minimum, the Risk Register Template should include:

  • Identify each risk

  • For each identified risk, the risk Mitigating Strategy

  • Risk Owner

  • Risk Trigger

We recommend that each project risk be ranked for the following:

How To Calculate a Risk Score Using a Proven Statistical Methodology

The Probability x Impact score will help you, as a project manager, identify the highest priority risks that need immediate attention as well as the risks that can wait till later.

As you will notice, the Risk Register does not actually help you estimate the project Size, Cost or Duration.

It merely helps you manage risk in the project.

In addition to the Project Risk Register, there is one other tool we recommend that you deploy on day-one, at the moment of project initiation, that will help you estimate the cost and duration of the project. This will be a topic of a follow on Article.

If you want to look ahead and see what's next or just can't wait, please e-mail me or give me a call and I will discuss it with you one-on-one. It's a biggie, it's really important and it takes some time to fully develop the discussion.  

We would also like to recommend you sign-up for free SAP Project Management Tips, a series of quick tips aligned with the ASAP methodology, which we've developed from many SAP implementations.

Download Our Top Ten  SAP Project Management Tips

 

People who read this also read:

10 Key SAP BW Project Risk Management Tips

10 Steps to Manage SAP Project Sub-Contractor Risk

12 Risk Management Considerations to Measure WRICEF-A

How to Manage Change Management Risk

SAP SEM CPM Risk Register Design Template

 

What Is Shopify & How Do You Use It to Boost Your Business?

1 Key Tip When Upgrading from SAP BW 3.X to BW 7.X [Checklist]

10 Advanced SAP BW Project Estimation Techniques [Online Tool]

Understanding Embedded Systems vs SAP HANA

8 Secrets to SAP Enabled Spend Performance Management

Learn What is Catch Weight Management

Learn What Tools To Use To Investigate IS-Mill Functionality

Leverage SAP BW to Increase Supply Chain Inventory Accuracy

BusinessObjects Explorer Best Practices

 

Download SAP BW Mindmap

Learn what SAP Business Warehouse is and what it does in under five minutes

Get this Mindmap

Doug Ayers

I am an MBA, B.S. in Computer Engineering and certified PMP with over 33 years working experience in software engineering and I like to go dancing after work. I program computers, solve problems, design systems, develop algorithms, crunch numbers (STEM), Manage all kinds of interesting projects, fix the occasional robot or “thing” that’s quit working, build new businesses and develop eCommerce solutions in Shopify, SAP Hybris, Amazon and Walmart. I have been an SAP Consultant for over 10 years. I am Vice-President and Co-Founder of SAP BW Consulting, Inc.

View All Articles by Doug Ayers

The SAP Blog

Subscribe to our blog and receive SAP BW Updates, demand generation, inbound marketing, sales enablement, technology and revenue generation insights and ideas delivered right to your email.