Introduction
Risk identification on a project is an important process in Identifying threats or opportunities a project is likely to encounter while in progress. The risk identification on a project usually focuses on eliminating or reducing the chances of a threat whilst raising the likelihood and impact of an opportunity. Hence, in this case, scenario of project X for the development of Automated Mobile Defense System for the department of defense, I will identify risks and opportunities to the project that will guarantee its failure or success.
Risk Identification
To start with, the automated mobile defense system is a complex undertaking that contains various parts which are; Anti-ballistic missile, detection devices, anti-missile control computer and a radar technology. With this complexity, the project can experience some technical risks such as design, construction, or operation risks of the system and since this automated mobile defense system will be probably be moved to an unknown location that will be only known to the military, its working environment might change resulting to not achieving the desired level of performance of the defense system.
The automated mobile system requires enormous resources of time, human material and financial resources to complete it. This may pose a project management risk such as schedule delays in materials supply and human resources required to finish part or the whole project as a result of failure of proper project organization by the managers.
Since the goal of Project X is to develop defense systems that protect major and strategic cities within the United States in the event of a missile attack from a hostile nation, a Poor definition of the goals and needs of the project can result in project purpose definition risks due to the project X complexity.
External risks to the project such as environmental factors and natural disasters which include unforeseen natural disasters such as earthquakes, tornados, ice storms that can affect the usage of this automated defense system should be identified. However they are beyond the control by the managers, they should be predicted so that measures to be put into place to counteract them (International, 2007, Para.1-10).
Project opportunities
With the above identifiable risks that project X is likely to face, it has opportunities to eliminate these risks. This can be done by the use of experts. This contracted company has a variety of experts who includes nuclear scientists, engineers, and technology professionals with experience in project management. Hence, the company can use their experience in project management to bring in vital information in identify the risks of the project and means of eliminating them.
Since this project X is a complex one, the management has the opportunity to identify the risks through work breakdown structure. Any event from the designing to demonstration of this project has inherent risks; hence work breakdown gives an opportunity to disclose these risks that are intrinsic to the interdependency of the work events of the project.
Interviewing and brainstorming session’s gives the project manager an opportunity to identify risks of the project and since this contracted company has professionals such as engineers, nuclear scientist and information technologists can help to identify risk through interviewing and professional consultations.
Finally, the ability of project X managers to predict risks which are beyond their control such as natural disaster like the earthquakes, tornados, ice storms which can affect this project is an opportunity to them to put measures to minimize their effects if they occur(Cubed, 2010, Para.9- 14).
Conclusion
The success of project X will depend on the ability of the managers to identify risk that could affect the automated mobile defense system project. The process of identification documents these risks which can be assigned to the project members and monitored throughout the project development to deployment of the system to the department of defense.
References
Cubed, P. (2010). About Risk Identification. Web.
International. (2007). Risk Identification and Assessment. Web.