LETTER TO THE EDITOR
23 March 2025
Ref: Abdolmohammadi, R. (2025). Practical Approach in Project Risk Definitions: Addressing Ambiguities and Introducing a New Risk Meta-Language; PM World Journal, Vol. XIV, Issue III, March. Available online at http://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/pmwj150-Mar2025-Abdolmohammadi-Introducing-new-risk-meta-language.pdf
Dear Editor,
I read with interest Rasoul Abdolmohammadi’s ideas about introducing a new risk metalanguage. As with most papers on this subject, there were some ideas that I agreed with and parts of the argument that I felt were missing. Over the years, writing guidance on the important matter of how risks can be understood and articulated has proven difficult to pin down. I have written about this subject in the past, and I am sure that there have been readers have failed to agree with all of my ideas too!
David Hillson’s original contribution to the principles of risk metalanguage has proved to be influential. I chaired the group that authored the APM’s Guide Prioritising Project Risks (2008). David was one of the guide’s four co-editors. As a group, we thought that, before risks were prioritised, they should be understood and articulated clearly. For this reason, the guide includes a chapter titled Understanding and Describing Risks. The chapter starts with the simple cause-risk-effect approach that David had first identified in connection with his metalanguage, explained using Figure 1 below.
Figure 1 Simple cause-risk-effect model
An important point to note from this figure is that the word cause refers to a fact or condition that is certain. Our group concluded that any risk description should be grounded in a context that is already known. Without this, the risk description becomes rootless. Another way of explaining the word cause in this sense is to describe it as capturing relevant project-specific facts.
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To read entire Letter to the Editor, click here
How to cite this work: Hopkinson, M. (2025). On the Subject of Risk Metalanguage, Letter to the Editor, PM World Journal, Vol. XIV, Issue IV, April. Available online at http://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/pmwj151-Apr2025-Hopkinson-risk-metalanguage-Letter-to-Editor.pdf
