Whitepaper Wednesday - Project Risks & Assumptions

Welcome back to another installment of Whitepaper Wednesday here on the Purchasing Certification Blog. Today, I will be reviewing a whitepaper entitled "Managing Assumptions" from Project Perfect.

Many times, when projects fail, it is because an assumption held by the project team turned out to be false. Unfortunately, I learned this the hard way early in my career. So, in the purchasing training that I deliver and other resources like my video "The Purchasing Negotiator's Worst Enemy" on the Purchasing Certification Channel, I stress that everyone should challenge all assumptions.

This whitepaper emphasizes this point and introduces a method for rating assumptions based on confidence, lead time, and impact. The whitepaper indicates that rating assumptions is a critical step in risk mitigation planning and that they "should drive the priority rating for the risk."

The whitepaper suggests going beyond the basics of just identifying assumptions (which some project teams don't even do) and continually managing assumptions throughout the project: "There is a tendency to let Assumptions ‘morph’ into accepted fact. A key part of project management is to monitor Assumptions. Action items should be created to follow up Assumptions and either validate or disprove."

I highly agree that identifying, rating, and monitoring assumptions are a critical piece of procurement project management. I believe that this whitepaper can give both good tips and inspiration to those who want their procurement projects to succeed. There's no registration required, so you can go here to download your own copy of the whitepaper now.

To Your Career,
Charles Dominick, SPSM
President & Chief Procurement Officer
Next Level Purchasing, Inc.
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