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Last week was a good week with 41 miles covered, several donations to the fundraising, and a new pair of running shoes!
This week was a little different though.
The 41 miles last week was unplanned, and I made a mistake of not carrying out a risk analysis on making the leap from 33 miles to 41. Typically when training, you shouldn't increase your distance by more than 10%, so it's no wonder that when I went out for the "Monday 8 miler" this week, my knees were painful to the point that the 8 miler became a 5 miler.
I did try to get going again, but my right knee was just too painful to continue, so it was not a case of 'RICE' - rest, ice, compress and elevate.
Risk analysis is a relatively straightforward thing to do. It comprises a few steps including:
• Identify - take time to consider the uncertainty of the project and think about specific problems and opportunities that might occur. You might find it useful to use categories to help identify risks during a workshop.
These categories could include risks associated with strategy, budgets, the economy, legislation, management, organisation, technology, the environment and the political landscape.
• Estimate - when you identify a risk, you should estimate how likely it is to happen (probability) and the impact on the project if it did happen.
There are many techniques for estimating risk, with the most simple being to multiply the probability by the impact to give a score. This score can then be aligned for triggering actions to be considered to help mitigate the risk, if required.
• Evaluate - this step looks at the value of each risk in terms of the potential cost of the impact versus the overhead of doing something about it. A common way to understand the value of a risk is to multiply the cost of impact by the likelihood.
For example, if the impact is estimated at £10,000 and there is a 20% likelihood of the risk occurring, then the value of the risk will be £2,000. This should be done for each risk and aggregated for the whole plan. Each mitigating action being considered should be assessed to determine the viability of the action.
• Plan - this is where we take the response actions and plan exactly what will be done to carry them out, by whom, and when. There are a number of actions you might consider, such as avoid (do something differently), reduce the probability or the impact, create a contingency plan as a backup should the risk happen, share the risk with a customer or supplier, or exploit an orbit to get the most from it.
In many cases you will choose to accept that the risk is there and it doesn't warrant any mitigating actions to be planned.
• Implement - this is all about executing your planned risk response actions and ensuring that there is a loop to reevaluate the risk to ensure that the response actions are having the desired affect. Ideally we would like to see the threats reducing and the opportunities increasing.
There will always be a need to revisit these 5 steps throughout progress of the plan as some risks will go away (we may pass the point of threat) and other risks may increase in their importance to mitigate.
Back to the training, I tried a little jeff (a run/walk activity) at the Wednesday #runFAR club meet but this was just painful, so I took a few days off to rest and reduced my long run on Friday to another half-marathon with Coach and my step-son Oakley.
This went pretty well, but the knee was getting very sore during the last mile. The week's training ended there on 18 miles as I didn't want to aggravate the knee any more. Time to think about managing those risks of further injury.
In the blog next week, I'll be taking a look at quality, with an in-process review to see how the acceptance criteria for the project is coming along.
In addition to Paul's London Marathon he will also be using his skills as a project management trainer to raise funds. Until the end of September APM PFQ and APM PMQ (live ONLIVE virtual classroom or On Demand) will be absolutely FREE! All we ask is that you make the required charitable donation in exchange to Paul's JustGiving page. Find out more by visiting our funding page in aid of Sense charity.
Paul Bradley is a leading authority on project management methods and techniques. With over 25 years in the industry, Paul's knowledge and experience is respected by clients, accreditation bodies and training organisations globally. Paul has been the Managing Director of SPOCE since 2005, and is an accredited trainer for PRINCE2®, APM and AgilePM®. He is a regular presenter at seminars, providing information on project implementation drawn from his expertise as an accredited Axelos P3M3® Consultant. He has had two books published to enhance the training and use of PRINCE2®. Paul is also an active member and co founder of the renown RunFAR® initiative that raises both awareness and funds for charitable causes. The #RunFAR mission is to run for a reason and share a passion for running with others.
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