Quiz: Is Your Project at Risk for Disaster?

In “Managing Project Uncertainty—From Variation to Chaos” (M.I.T. Sloan Management Review, Winter 2002), three business school professors describe a continuum of risk onto which they say every project falls. Take this quiz, created by Baseline, to find out what risks your project faces—and what management techniques you’ll need to combat them.

Choose the radio button by the appropriate answer to indicate how accurate each statement is for your project. Click the button at the bottom to obtain your score and its interpretation.

 Very
accurate
Somewhat
accurate
Not
very
accurate
Mostly or
completely
inaccurate
1. There’s little new technology involved in this project—the products have been available for years and are already in use at many companies.

2. This project involves multiple divisions or departments and will require us to collaborate with others outside our immediate team.

3. This project will make or break the career of the executive who’s sponsoring it.

4. We know the three biggest risks for this project and how we would address them.

5. This project depends on factors outside of our company’s control.

6. The tasks in this project happen sequentially.

7. There are widely accepted best practices associated with this sort of project.

8. The industry I’m in tends to be stable; there generally aren’t a lot of surprises in it.

9. My company has done this same project multiple times in the past.

10. The project’s key vendor is one we haven’t worked with before.


Note: This quiz requires at least Microsoft IE 4.0, Netscape 6.0, or other compatible Web browser.

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Find out more in When Bad Things Happen to Good Projects.