A Framework to Select Techniques Supporting Project Risk Management

The need for increasing quality while reducing time and costs asks for developing knowledge about how to manage risk in projects. However, communication and knowledge creation are not easy tasks, especially when dealing with uncertainty, because decision-making is often fragmented and a shared perspective on the goals, opportunities, and threats of a project is missing. With the purpose of stimulating knowledge, a framework to classify techniques supporting project risk management is proposed. To this end, three dimensions encompassing the main aspects characterising the managerial and operational scenario of a project are considered: the phases of the risk management process, the phases of the project life cycle, and the corporate maturity towards risk. The taxonomy is then applied to a wide selection of risk techniques based on the analysis of literature and the authors’ experience. Future research efforts will be directed towards refining the framework and testing it in multiple industries.