LETTER TO THE EDITOR
24 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,
My comments refer to the points raised by the risk definition chain shown below as defined section 3 in the article.
Figure 1: The Risk Chain from Rasoul’s Article
I think that the central element should not be labelled “risk” for the following reasons:
- For many years now, the practice of risk management has been expanded to encompass the management of opportunities. Labelling the uncertain result of the cause as “RISK” can therefore lead to confusion.
- It is also confusing in general to use “RISK” as a component of the definition of risk.
In addition, for full generality, the chain above should be expanded as follows:
[1] Certain or uncertain CAUSE -> [2] Certain of uncertain EFFECT so that if [3] SITUATION exists, the EFFECT will have -> [4] RESULT, leading to -> [5] IMPACT on [6] SUCCESS[1]
More…
To read entire Letter to the Editor, click here
How to cite this work: Piney, C. (2025). On the Subject of the March article on Risk Meta-language, 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-Piney-on-risk-meta-language-Letter-to-Editor.pdf
[1] I have used the term “success” rather than “objectives” because I feel that it is important to avoid the confusion that can be generated by some of the standard definitions which refer to “effect … on objectives”, whereas the effect is on achieving the objectives and not on the objectives themselves. (Changing the objectives after the fact to comply with the actual result is not an acceptable risk response technique!)
