Risk management at JPL-practices and promises

Risk Management (RM) at JPL has developed in the past few years from a pioneering, effort instituted and implemented by a few brave projects to a methodology required on all projects and supported by a well-defined process and training activity. This paper discusses the beginnings of RM at JPL, the lessons learned from those experiences, and the evolution to the current process. The JPL process is discussed in its salient features: planning, identification and assessment, decision-making, and risk tracking. RM strategies to allow the desired decisions in pro-actively using resources reserves to mitigate risks are presented. Finally, some observations of the direction of future improvements are discussed.