Uncertainty Management in Perspective of Opportunity Management

Uncertainty management has developed in recent years into an accepted discipline, applied more broadly than just in projects, with its own language, processes, techniques and tools, and a growing body of literature specifically written on this subject. One of the major efforts of specialists in this topic is to include opportunities in the risk management process in order to be able to broaden the scope of uncertainty management to both positive and negative sides proactively. This study will be directed through literature study, based on library databases, books, journals and conference papers and also standards and guidelines. In case of standards and guidelines, we have studied PMBOK ® from PMI ® and PRAM ® guide from APM ® , since these are considered to be the most accepted and useful ones. The main objectives of this paper are to understand uncertainty management concepts and main definitions, the risk management process, the opportunity management process and also finding strategies which support opportunity management. We have tried to find out how different practitioners define risk, uncertainty and opportunity and how they use the opportunity management process. Several risk management processes have been mentioned in the paper but our main focus is on David Hillson’s1 approach and the strategies he applies for opportunity management. He believes that Risk management process should be capable of handling both threats and opportunities. According to this, the phases in risk management process include: 1. Risk definition 2. Risk identification 3. Risk assessment 4. Risk response planning 5. Risk monitoring/ control/ review

Keywords:

Uncertainty management , risk management , opportunity management