1-discussion-post
“Uncertainty and Risks ” Please respond to the following:
- In the video, Michael T. Pich, one of the textbook authors, recommends two approaches for uncertainty and subsequently risks. As companies strive to remain in business, there are many economic, social, and technological unknowns. As a project leader, determine how you would explain Pich’s three classical approaches to your project team.
- From the e-Activity, provide an example of a project choosing selectionism and learning. Read each classmate’s example and comment on at least two. Each example should be unique.
Also reply back to these two classmate posts:
1. Doug Herring
Good afternoon class,
Having a direction to run in, can benefit a project team greatly. Often times new Project Managers tend to want to run when they should be learning how to walk. This leads many projects into problems or delays that could have been prevented from the start or at least mitigated to an extent. During the planning or bid stages of a project, a project team should, to the best of their abilities, identify majority of the risks that will be involved with the project. As a project leader, the first thing I would establish for a team is the direction to run. Informing the entire team of what the end goal is allows multiple individuals to input different ways of completion. Having different ways of completion can provide your team with multiple risks that one individual may not have realized. This would be Pitch’s first step, prevention. The next phase would me sticking to your plans and maintain the knowledge of the risks that your team has already identified. Once risks are identified, there are usually standards or procedures written to prevent those risks from happening. Those standards and procedures can be referred to mitigation. The last step for the team would be the “what if” type questions. When these questions are posed at anytime in the project it is wise to take them into consideration. Hearing outside ideas keeps a project on their toes and continues to manage any identified risks or even problem areas to avoid. Having all of these identified as a team can be the make it or break it of a project and as long as your team is willing to be flexible throughout the project keeping their ideas fresh, you can greatly reduce project slack as well as prevention of spending money on risks that were unidentified.
A project that uses selectionism and learning would be the retail giant, WalMart. This company started out in Arkansas where it was only home goods. Similar to Kmart, Target and other local home good stores, WalMart began to dabble in a bit of everything by monitoring their income from which products. How certain items sold in different places of the store. Price points customers thought were reasonable and even began to expand their market stores enough to attempt to open marketside grocery stores. This attempt however did not work for the company and was quickly bought out by Dollar General. To this date, WalMart still has their hand in multiple pools ranging from car maintenance to groceries in their super stores. It was quite an amazing accomplishment that all aspects of that company function as well as they do but set up by a team of visionaries who saw that multiple people could use different things through out their trip to one store.
2. Kindell Bates
Hello Class,
How would I use, Michael T. Pich commentary on selectionism and learning? My approach would be to explain how it would be important
- To carefully evaluate the risk of uncertainties. By viewing different types of uncertainties for an example weather, budget, time off and other unknowns that can affect a project.
- Map out a Tendency plan. Just in case something that you can control is covered, example replace a person, redesign of a software, or moving to another location to complete the project if possible
- Feedback, most important. By excepting feedback your evolving and learning other ways to accomplish a task or project. Each project or task may have some similarities, however, there may be some differences that may prompt you to look for other resources to help with overcoming that task or project. Having an open mind to a different view.
Amazon.com
Jeff Bezos used selectionism and learn to build the most prestigious online dealer in the world.
In 1994, Jeff Bezos launch Amazon.com as a bookseller online, unlike the first company from Silicon Valley bookstore who sold their books from their technically astute customer in 1991. Amazon.com sells their book stock to any reader anywhere. Amazon.com was scrutinized and labeled to fail (AMAZON.bomb). However, Bezos dismissed the failing idea of naysayers not seeing its potential. Amazon.com grow fast and reached 180,000 customer accounts by December 1996 after the first year of business. Amazon.com expanded quickly in other areas with other merchandise; by 1996, Amazon.com would fill orders and pay commission, in other words, the site would office an eBay trading on its site. 350,000 customers by 1999. The company started to sell music and videos by 1998 and that same year starting selling produces internationally. By 1999, the company started selling consumer electronics, video games, software and home-improvement items plus products. After two years of opening its virtual doors and without even making a profit. Amazon.com became a public company, raising 54 million on the NASDAQ market. By 2002 Amazon.com launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) that offered data on internet traffic patterns, website popularity, and statistic for developers and marketers.
Kindell Bates
