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Did you know that nearly two-thirds of business-improvement initiatives fail to fulfil their promise? Studies have shown this is the case for a number of years. The amount of money that is being spent without yielding the results that are expected is just scary. Project management is part of a business improvement initiative, but it is only part of a much larger continuum. That continuum starts with an idea and ends when the full value of that idea is brought to fruition.

There are really three major roles and sections to this whole idea of an improvement initiative. On one end, you have business analysis. Then there is project management, and then there is organizational change. Let me talk about all three of these for a moment. First, business analysis starts with, I have got an idea. Now typically, when you go from the I have got an idea, you do what is called an as-is analysis. What is happening in the business today? How are those processes working, or in some cases not working? From that, you go to a to be exercise. What could this process be? How can we improve it? How it ultimately, the business would be more efficient, more effective, expand their market share.

Whatever the case may be in this to-be analysis. From the to-be analysis, we then get to the project management. They take that to-be analysis and say, okay, we are going to have new business processors. We are going to build new tools. We are going to change the nature of roads. We are going to build a new you know; we are going to drill a new oil well. Whatever, whatever it is that, that, that project consists of takes that to be environment and it ultimately creates a set of deliverables. Now, those deliverables have to be incorporated into the day to day business.

And that is where organizational change then enters into the picture. Organizational change is part training. It could be cultural change. It could be changing people's performance management exercise. Whatever the case may be, it is taking those deliverables or the catalyst for business value, and ultimately making sure that you get the full business value that is envisioned in the idea on this end, out of in this end. It is a very, very concentrated people process to ultimately say we are going to make sure that people's day to day approach to business and the day to day habits that they have are going to change because they are going to use these deliverables effectively and efficiently to bring that value to bear.

The biggest advantage of using project risk management is that it helps in identifying the risks involved in the project. You should be able to open-mindedly think about any possible risks that might be involved in the project. In order to identify the risks in your project, you basically need two important sources - people and paper. The individuals that make up your project team come from diverse backgrounds and they bring their personal expertise and experiences to the projects.

Your team members and other people who are involved in the project can expose the traps that you might encounter or the opportunities that you might have missed. Team session and risk brainstorming are the common methods that you may use to identify the risks that people involved in the project might know. Another important source that can help you identify the risks is paper.

The projects usually tend to generate a large volume of papers in the form of electronic documents. If you read these documents carefully, you might be able to identify...