The state of the art of risk management in projects

Project Risk Management helps with achieving project objectives, especially those concerning cost and time. APM defines a project risk as ‘an uncertain event or set of circumstances that would, if it occurred, have an effect on the achievement of one or many [project] objectives’. Risks can be either threats that hurt the project objectives, or opportunities that benefit the project objectives. Over time, project professionals have expressed concern with the idea that risks can be ‘positive’, since it does not align with thinking in the non-project world, where risks are always negative. There is also a feeling that opportunities are often not identified, and if identified, treated differently from threats.