Why project managers tend to always see negative risks? Most of projects managers prefer to focus only on threats rather than opportunities, you need to ask yourself when was the last time you added a positive risk in your risk registry? if you do not remember then it is time to change this pessimist attitude we, project managers, tend to take while identifying risks, this will definitely add more value to your project.

No one would argue that Risk Management is one of the most important processes for any project, and in fact many projects do fail due to failing to proactively identify a certain risk, to be honest, positive risks (aka Opportunities) are always missed, even if they are not missed, they get identified no an ad-hoc basis and not as structured as the process the project manager rigorously follows to identify negative risks (aka threats), many project managers just manage all project the same way, while it is good to follow the process, I am very much against the idea that the project manager manages all the projects the same style, as we all know that each and every project is unique, and we also have to adapt the way manage each project accordingly.

SEE (Share, Enhance, Exploit) Positive Risks, this is just to remind you of the positive risks strategies:

• Share: Every time you identify a positive risk and you figure out that you can not handle it all on your own, you can partner with another entity in order to be able to embrace the opportunity, this basically happens if you do not have experience with the domain of the opportunity or you need a support that may be strategic, financial, etc.
• Enhance:This is the opposite of mitigate strategy, mitigate is the most common word used these days when it comes to risk, this strategy maximizes the opportunity.
• Exploit: This is the opposite of Avoid, when you identify a new opportunity, just exploit it!

You need to SEE the opportunities, I believe that the real value a project manager brings to the organization is not only by identifying the threats, it is by also spotting new opportunities, every time you detect an opportunity, communicate it to your project sponsor and key stakeholders, even if it does not materialize, the sponsor will value your contribution, sometimes the sponsor will never know about the negative risks unless it occur, but every time you spot and communicate an opportunity, all the project stakeholders will get to know, however make sure you do the ground work before communicating the positive risks.

We need to have this kind of attitude, if a positive risk metalizes it can add too much value to the business and being the conductor of the project, you can easily identify positive risks, in order to build this habit, you need to add opportunities identification in your Risk Planning & Risk Identification processes, and ask questions such as:

• How can we maximize the value of the product of the project?
• Is there any quick win we can add to the product of the project?
• If our competitor’s launch date slips, how can we exploit that in our favour?
• Can we change the scope to include the latest standard in smart home systems, so we can have larger customer base and increase marketability?

While some people may look at this as some kind of scope creep or trying to expand the scope of the project, I advise not to look at it from that negative perspective, especially the exercise of Risk Planning is getting conducted at the planning phase, yet you need to build this attitude and believe me it will pay off.

In 2010 let’s build this positive attitude in Risk Management practice and start to care about opportunities as much as we care about threats

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