Brain Storm

I had an idea this week. I've been trying to develop a risk management strategy for my new company for our projects to use. There is a fairly common risk management strategy used by much of the IT community that measures the exposure of the project to risk. I've never been fully satisfied with the approach because the value of risk exposure still requires a lot of interpretation in order to provide meaning.

So I started exploring and I came up with a new strategy that involves techniques from engineering and operations research. I'm still developing it but I'm really excited about it. I have to finalize the strategy and implement it, then measure the results and see if they are better than the current strategy. So basically, this could lead to nothing but it could also lead to something big. As I was developing the idea, metrics started to form in my mind from the risk data I want to collect from our projects. I think the metrics may provide more value to the projects and the organization than what I've seen with other risk metrics.

The company has given me the go ahead to implement the strategy. This is exciting on many levels. I'm excited to be at a company that promotes innovation and is willing to try new ideas. I'm also excited on a personal level for what this could lead to. I've wanted to get into teaching in some capacity and this has potential to lead to speaking at conferences, etc. In the last two jobs I've had, innovation was not valued and I think that I started to limit my thinking because I knew the ideas wouldn't be embraced (or understood). I feel like I'm coming back out of my shell at my new company. It's great to be around other thinkers. I'm so excited. I haven't been this excited about a project in a really long time and it made me realize just how important it is to be at a company that you fit with intellectually. This has been a great week!