Not realizing and mitigating risks to delivery, quality, feature fulfillment and budget can at the extreme lead to significant business losses, putting an entire company at risk. We argue that project risk management is central to secure successful product delivery. Project risk management can and should be used as a key lever in:

• bringing a balanced perspective to the management of complicated issues in complex organizations
• prioritizing work in a rapidly changing context with an anticipated approach that is better than simple intuition and that facilitates communication between people
• identifying knowledge gaps and actively closing these gaps
• the active management (and not the avoidance) of risk by being alert and prepared