Risk Management

Project Risk Managementof Project Management: Case Studies read the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster case study. Answer questions 3 and 4 under Risk Management Plan; 6 and 7 under Risk Identification; 5 and 6 under Risk Quantification; 3 and 4 under Risk Response (Risk Handling); and 4 and 5 under Risk Control.

1. Is there a difference between a risk management plan, a quality assurance plan, and a safety plan, or are they the same?

2. Would there have been a better way to handle risk management planning at NASA assuming 16 flights per year, 25 flights per year, or as originally planned, 60 flights per year? Why is the number of flights per year critical in designing a formalized risk management plan?

3. How should one identify or classify trade-off risks, such as trading off safety for political acceptability?

4. How should one identify or classify the risks associated with pressure resulting from making promises that may be hard to keep?

5. How were the identified risks quantified at NASA? Is the quantification system truly quantitative or is it a qualitative system?

6. Were probabilities assigned to any of the risks? Why or why not?

7. What methods of risk response were used at NASA?

8. Did it appear that the risk response method selected was dependent on the risk or on other factors?

9. Should someone have stopped the Challenger launch, and, if so, how could this have been accomplished without risking one’s job and career?

10. How might an engineer deal with pressure from above to follow a course of action that the engineer knows to be wrong?