Aperitif from the Poisoned Cup or Why You Always Start With Risk

Risk should be your breakfast. Moreover - it should be the appetizer to every meal you have. Drink your aperitif from the poisoned cup. Beyond avoid, mitigate, transfer, escalate, and accept - the move PMBOK doesn't teach you on how to truly own risk. It gives you five things to do with a risk - avoid it, mitigate it, transfer it, escalate it, or accept it. It is a tidy list. It is also a list designed for risks that have already arrived - risks you encounter, log, and respond to. It quietly casts the project manager as a triage nurse, sorting incoming threats by severity and shipping them to the appropriate department. The PMs I respect most refuse to be triage nurses. They are time travelers. When a risk lands on their desk, they don't ask "What do I do with this?" They ask "Where in the project would this have been cheap to solve, and can I still get there?". This is shift-risk-left. The name is borrowed from DevOps, where shift-left means catching bugs earlier in the development…