ABSTRACT
Jim was a realist. He knew that every project entails risk. Like most managers, he dreaded the thought of a risk becoming reality and turning his project into a disaster. Although not as risk averse as some managers, Jim was surprised when he read Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister’s book, Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects, and discovered that they have a different attitude. Far from decrying risk as a bad thing, DeMarco and Lister claim, “Projects with no real risks are losers. They’re almost always devoid of benefit; that’s why they weren’t done years ago.”* Jim was chuckling as he headed to the team’s next meeting. Since the primary purpose of the meeting was to identify and then mitigate the impact of risks, he would begin by sharing the DeMarco and Lister quote with the team. If there was a direct correlation between risk and benefits, the GWC-IW merger and the relocation to Bluebell was certain to have many benefits, because it certainly had enough risks.
