A Risk Management Methodology for Project Risk Dependencies

Project risks are not always independent, yet current risk management practices do not clearly manage dependencies between risks. If dependencies can be explicitly identified and analyzed, project managers will be able to develop better risk management strategies and make more effective risk planning decisions. This paper proposes a management methodology to address risk dependency issues. Through the study of three IT projects, we confirm that risk dependencies do exist in projects and can be identified and systematically managed. We also observed that, as project teams needed to deal with risk dependency issues, communications between projects were improved, and there were synergetic effects in managing risks and risk dependencies among projects.