Managing risk and uncertainty on projects: a cognitive approach

This article aims to reconnect project risk management with its roots in psychology and economics and thereby generate a cognitive approach to project risk management. While there has been widespread application of the tools and techniques of project risk management, and good practice has been captured in a large number of different standards and texts, few signs of improvement are apparent in project performance. The article suggest that the inappropriate use of project risk management techniques may be part of the problem rather than part of the solution here, and that we need to rethink project risk management from first principles. Starting from a presumption that project risk management is the essence of project management more generally, the article offers a review of some of the key contributions from psychology and economics that have shaped our thinking before presenting a cognitive model of project risk managing.