PMP PERSPECTIVE COVID-19 PART II – RISK EVENT MITIGATION

PMP Perspective COVID-19
Part II – Risk Event Mitigation

As I noted in the last article on this topic, when Project Managers evaluate potential risk events, the first step after event identification is Qualitative Risk Analysis, which is a Subjective evaluation of the event probability and event impact to the project. We perform this type of analysis so we don’t spend a large amount of time and money analyzing risk events that either are highly unlikely to happen or will have minimum impact on our project if they do occur. At that time, I noted that until recently, a project manager would have considered a pandemic to be a highly unlikely event and would not had implemented a Quantitative Risk Analysis where serious probability and impact analysis would be performed. In the US, until mid-March, the risk management strategy for a pandemic such as COVID-19 would have been an Acceptance Strategy, as the low probability associated with a pandemic would have precluded a proactive response plan. When project managers consider an Acceptance Strategy there are two choices, Active Acceptance and Passive Acceptance. When a project manager uses a Passive Acceptance strategy, the project manager just assumes that if the risk event occurs the repercussions will be addressed when/if the risk event occurs. When a project manager uses an Active Acceptance strategy, the project manager establishes a contingency reserve for the project including amounts of time, money, and resources to be used if the project’s acceptable variances are exceeded. Examples of how this activity is performed by government entities and project managers are disaster preparedness plans for hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes in areas that are prone to these events.


As with all disaster preparedness plans the trick is to prepare enough to mitigate the damage as much as possible while spending the least amount of money and time developing and maintaining the plans. Preparing for a 25 to 50 year flood is tricky enough, preparing for a 100 year pandemic event is even more challenging because:

1.         Preparations will be very expensive even if they not robust
2. Medical technology is constantly changing, so equipment will become obsolete
3.  Equipment degrades over time, even if never used
4. Very successful implementation can give people the impression the event was not that bad and probably should have been addressed through passive acceptance

So how can governments and project managers, prepare for ‘black swans’ or events that occur very infrequently? Some thoughts on these issues are…


Preparations will be very expensive even if they not robust – when a project manager knows a risk event has very low probability of occurring and that preparing for it will be very expensive, the key is to provide mitigation for a minimum period of time, until resources can be mustered to provide an ‘acceptable solution’. In this situation, not letting the ‘perfect’ be the enemy of the ‘good’ needs to be taken to the level of just keeping the damage to a level where the project can be brought back on track as the situation is assessed and a permanent resolution is developed.


Simply put, acknowledging the potential for a disaster and considering what resources would have to be in place in the short run to keep total disaster at bay.


Medical technology is constantly changing, so equipment will become obsolete – whether dealing with a medical emergency or some other risk, technology is constantly changing so any risk management plan should have reviews at least every year to ensure that technology assumptions are still correct. I would not want to be addressing COVID-19 with a plan based on state of the art 1918 medical techniques


Equipment degrades over time, even if never used – Any risk mitigation plan that will require the stockpiling of equipment must address the dual issues of technology change noted above as well as equipment degradation. The plan should address upgrading equipment and disposal of old equipment well before the equipment becomes obsolete. Rotating new equipment in and disposing of old equipment on a routine basis ensure the old equipment can be sold for a reasonable price and that equipment stored is always up to date.


Very successful implementation can give people the impression the event was not that bad and probably should have been addressed through passive acceptance – There is always the chance that the mitigation plan goes so well that people don’t realize there ever was a serious problem, and as such preparing for future risk events is hampered. When I was managing a LAN/Desktop Support team, I used to tell my internal customers that if you have good IT support, you don’t realize you have an IT team, because ‘things, work’ As always this is a management communication challenge, and as every good project manager knows communications is one of their most important jobs.

In closing, the key to managing risk is having people involved who are responsible, competent, and able to communicate the value of risk management.


The next article in this series will address Lessons Learned from the efforts of government in the United States to minimize the impact of COVID-19… from a PMP Perspective. Obviously, it may be a while before I write that one as we don’t know how long this crisis will continue.


Rules for comments…

1.         I will never tell you how to vote, I just ask that you do your due diligence and vote accordingly
2. I will never get ‘personal’, I will treat President Trump, Speaker Pelosi, and every other politician with the respect their office deserves, whether they deserve it or not
3.  I will not be partisan, difficult though that may be for me, there is enough partisanship out there for people that want it
4. I will not be a ‘hater’, if you want hate, there are plenty of writers who will give you as much as you can take
5.  I expect commenters to behave the same, if you can’t abide by the rules I hold myself to, I will not respond to your comments, not because you have ‘convinced’ or ‘intimidated’ me, but because I choose not to go there

PMP Perspective - COVID-19 Is the Cure Really Worse Than the Disease?

PMP Perspective - COVID-19

Is the Cure Really Worse Than the Disease?

When Project Managers evaluate potential risk events, the first step after event identification is Qualitative Risk Analysis, which is a Subjective evaluation of the event probability and event impact to the project. We perform this type of analysis so we don’t spend a large amount of time and money analyzing risk events that either are highly unlikely to happen or will have minimum impact on our project if they do occur. In honesty, I must state that if I was performing risk analysis of a project in December 2019, I would have totally blown off the impact of the COVID-19 virus, unless my project was in Asia. Alas I would have been wrong. Although my analysis would have been incorrect, I would have had good reason for it, as the last Pandemic we had in the United States was in 1918 – over 100 years ago in other words,  low probability.

Another principle of Project Management Risk Management is that we review our potential risks often and adjust our plans when situations change. Obviously, the situation has changed and now governments worldwide are instituting lock downs of various severity to address the potential spread, and impact of COVID-19.


There has recently been a lot of discussion about whether the harm to the economy is worth the efforts being taken by state and federal governments in the US, to slow down COVID-19 spreading. First of all, let me be clear, NO ONE LIKES BEING RESTRICTED, it makes life less enjoyable for all, and downright depressing for some. Ask anyone who has taken on a major inconvenience for a long-term benefit whether it be cancer therapy or a serious weight loss diet, there are always times, especially early in the treatment when the need is questioned. Having stated the obvious. Let’s consider what’s really going on here and the alternatives.


This is not about stopping the spread of COVID-19, this is about ‘flattening the curve’ of the spread of the virus so that health care professionals do not get overwhelmed and we go from a serious inconvenience to a national disaster. In other words, a certain percentage of the population will probably get COVID-19, the genie is ‘out of the bottle’ now, that’s inevitable, the question is can we slow the spread down enough so that the health care system can absorb the incoming patients in a crisis manner, or will it be so overwhelmed that a number of patients will unnecessarily suffer and many die because care was simply not possible. Essentially this is ‘pay me now, or pay me later’ thing, we could do nothing and the virus would ‘burn itself out’ as the population gains natural immunity in a relatively short period of time, or we can flatten the curve and have the virus play out over a longer period of time so we have time to react to medical care needs. There is no ‘good outcome’ here, we are in the ‘minimize losses‘ mode.


Let us consider our choices from the impact on businesses, professional sports, hospitality, and society in general. According to Wordometer. Info https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/  as of April 1, 2020 there have been 207,535 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the US and of that number 4,609 have died, and 8.762 have recovered. That means that approximately 2% of the people that show symptoms of the virus will die. I state it that way because you have a very hard time getting testing for COVID-19 right now unless you are showing symptoms, so probably more people are infected but less percent of people are dying.


Impact on business: right now the numbers don’t look too daunting, but as has been shown in many locations worldwide, this virus tends to ramp up very quickly, which means that if it hits a workplace that has over 50 people there’s a good chance that productivity will be severely hampered if not brought to a halt quickly. With the measures being put in place many occupations can be done remotely with minimal chance of infection. I am a big fan of working from home where possible to maintain productivity and minimize potential infection impact – slow it down so that the percent of employees sick at any given time is not overwhelming to the business. I realize not everyone has the luxury of working from home, but if we can get people who are able to work from home to do it, the numbers of those who must be on the streets gets limited.


Impact professional sports – most professional sporting events have an audience of at least 10,000 people. I am a serious NHL fan and go to about 13 games a year. I have noticed that my chances of getting a cold are a lot higher when I go to games during the ‘cold season’ and it is on my mind when I’m at games during those periods. Having said that, a cold is an inconvenience, it’s nothing like the flu or worse like what is being described for COVID19. I will not skip a game I have tickets to because I might get a cold, but I must say based on all that I read about COVID-19 I doubt I would risk going to an NHL game right now. I think the leagues made the correct decision, even though as a fan, I currently hate it. If people started to catch COVID-19 at professional sports venues, the impact would probably last longer than the current lock down will end up being.


Impact on hospitality industry – there is no way to sugarcoat this one, a lot of people will be out of work and many of them don’t have good benefits, this one will be on society – government aide – to help these people get through this crisis. If these businesses were to stay open, the long term impact of many people figuring out they got sick after going to a nice restaurant or theme park or concert, etc. would have a very negative impact on the industry’s economy that would last much longer than the lock down.


Impact on society in general – as noted earlier, this is no fun, and it’s going to go on for a while. It reminds me a lot of the emotional wringer we, in central Florida, were put through during Hurricane Irma a couple years ago where we were bombarded with news of the potential disaster for two weeks before it arrived, then endured a week without power after it hit. The longer it went on, the worse it got, and this will go on much longer, although for most the personal strain will be mainly economic, not mental and physical, it still going to be very hard.


The other impact is on the people who will get seriously ill and/or die, I have heard it said we shouldn’t let the 2% hold the rest of us hostage, I guess a ‘culling of the herd’ makes sense…UNLESS YOU OR A LOVED ONE IS AMONG THOSE IMPACTED, but I prefer to think we’re all in this together and should use this as an opportunity to let our best side shine, and I see that happening in a lot of places from a lot of people.


So, is ‘flattening the curve really worth it? Let’s consider the “Spanish Flu’ pandemic of 1918. The government was in the middle of ramping up a war effort and didn’t try to get people to ‘self isolate’ until way too late because rallies to support the effort were considered more important to national security – I will not judge this, it is a function of what was considered important by national and state leadership at that time. Also, there was concern then, as now of the impact of slowing down the economy, and of course, medical technology was nowhere near as advanced then as now. The result approximately 600,000 United States citizens died. To put that in perspective the US population prior to the pandemic was more than 103 million, that’s approximately .5%, but understand testing in 1918 was typically, you showed up at the doctors office incapacitated by the flu, so we don’t know what percent of the population was infected. The good news was that the flu 'burned itself out' in about a month... but at what cost in lives and to the economy - losing .5% of your population, not to mention the number of sick days that were missed but not noted in 1918, plays havoc on the economy too.

In 2020 the US population is approximately 330 million, and if the actions being taken by state and federal governments are effective in ‘flattening the curve’, worst case predictions are approximately 200,000 United States citizens will die (hopes are it will be significantly lower than that), that’s approximately .06% mortality rate. Again, this ASSUMES:
1) Government controls do indeed flatten the curve and
2) The health care system is able to absorb the people who get seriously sick with COVID-19 in an adequate manner

I prefer us not to have the national trauma that occurred during the 1918 pandemic, even though it means we will suffer economically.

Bottom line, this will not be enjoyable, but let’s allow the ‘lock down’ decisions to be made by medical professionals that will, after all, be the ones who will get the brunt of the impact of those decisions.

The next article will address the efforts government in the United States is taking to mitigate the economic impact of COVID-19… from a PMP Perspective


Rules for comments…

1. I will never tell you how to vote, I just ask that you do your due diligence and vote accordingly
2. I will never get ‘personal’, I will treat President Trump, Speaker Pelosi, and every other politician with the respect their office deserves, whether they deserve it or not
3. I will not be partisan, difficult though that may be for me, there is enough partisanship out there for people that want it
4. I will not be a ‘hater’, if you want hate, there are plenty of writers who will give you as much as you can take
5. I expect commenters to behave the same, if you can’t abide by the rules I hold myself to, I will not respond to your comments, not because you have ‘convinced’ or ‘intimidated’ me, but because I choose not to go there