ABSTRACT
The approach to managing risk in complex projects in recent years has been centred around the Project Risk Register (PRR). Some project managers assemble a PRR and say “so what?”. Others use it for analysis and planning; however, the escalating intra-complexity of projects means that project risks are becoming more inter-related, and the impacts of risks more systemic. In these circumstances, simple treatment of individual items in the PRR is flawed. The approach discussed here took a PRR and reassembled it into a “cause map” to capture the inter-relationships between risk items and help towards a deeper understanding of the causality. Use of appropriate software provided useful analysis tools which form clusters of relatively independent “scenarios”. The process also suggested that “cognitive mapping” used prior to cause mapping would be an efficient and effective way of developing a structured PRR; and a Group Decision Support System (perhaps networked) would enable aggregation of knowledge from diverse sources. Finally, the structure of the cause map developed in the case study described, suggested that the scenario approach would be a useful analysis and planning tool allowing action options to be tested against a number of possible alternative futures. The whole process could be a powerful first step in risk evaluation. Keywords: risk register; cause mapping; scenarios
