Crisis management

Developed by Tom Ruetgers

Abstract

Crisis Management in general terms defines how an organization or Individuum respond to an unwanted (suddenly) occurred event. The terminology gets used in several different contexts. The most popular are: politic, nature, financial and organization sector. This wiki article focus on crisis management within an organization in a project management environment. It will introduce how project management teams can identify crises and state varying approaches to deal with crises and how to recover a troubled projects. No matter how well a project is planed and prepared, due to the rapidly changing world and constraints it is impossible to eliminate all unknown variables. therefore, a special focus on risk management should be set in the preparation of a project to prevent events which could lead to a crisis as much as possible. Which sounds theoretical spoken quite simple is in the practical world often more difficult. Almost all projects run under tough conditions regarding all resources as budget, manpower and time. Subsequently, it is not surprising that approximately 70% of all major projects and programs fail to achieve their objectives. A crisis can emerge in two different ways: On the one hand by a suddenly occurred fatal event, collapse of a construction for instance. On the other hand, a crisis can also occur slowly. Due to badly monitoring or even suppressed expenditures projects can get out of control and exceed objectives drastically. In such a situation it is necessary, that the project manager realizes that the current circumstances are no longer manageable to meet requirements of the project. A crisis in general is defined as a time of intense danger or when a difficult and important decision must be made. . Related to project management, a crisis can usually be aligned to one of the following rubrics:

• financial
• schedule
• environment
• legal
• accidents

Most likely, the project and the associated companies are also attract negative public attention, which harms the firms reputation and puts even more pressure on the project management team.

Emergency Management

First Aid

Crisis Management

3R approach

Step 2: Reason

Root to causes Data collection and analysis

Step 3: Remedy

Decision making

Recovery and prevention

back on track

Literature

• : Is written by Stephen Carter, a Senior lecturer Professor in Project & Programme Management at Cranfield University. He worked on projects for the oil business before moving on to work at Virgin before working directly for a global CEO as head of Project & Programme Management Strategy.