**Author details**

92 Risk Management – Current Issues and Challenges

both small-scale and large-scale projects.

risk management.

**6. Conclusion** 

easily adapted to reflect the requirements of different industries. Finally, it is suitable to

Tangible and intangible benefits can be derived from the application of the framework. Tangible advantages are associated with decision-making and include an improved understanding of projects, giving as a consequence a better control over resources, the provision of a structured support to develop and implement monitoring strategies, and a better use of means to identify and assess risk with an inherent positive impact on the evaluation of contingencies. Among intangible benefits, facilitation of a rational risk taking and improvement of communication can be mentioned. The developed framework also encourages a more proactive approach to risk as a result of a well planned management process. All these characteristics ultimately emphasise the integration among project and

However, the criteria and the classification of the techniques to support risk management have been derived exclusively from the available literature and from the authors' experience. Empirically testing the outcomes of this study by applying them to real projects

Therefore, future research efforts will be directed towards the implementation of the framework in multiple project settings in representative industries. Enhancing the taxonomy by introducing further dimensions, such as the complexity level of a project and the degree of innovation of its product, will be considered. The degree of innovation of the product of a project is particularly interesting because it may be connected with the phases of the project life cycle. In fact, the more innovative is the outcome, the more the risk management process will be concentrated in the planning phase. Conversely, the less innovative the product the more the focus on risk in the execution phase. Additional evolutions will be concerned with a systematic analysis of the concepts of method, technique, and tool together with the study of the relationships among them, and with extending the framework to include new practices to support risk management. Finally, a further research line could deal with the integration of the proposed framework into a global project management process with the aim of overcoming the traditional separation between running a project and identifying,

The extreme importance of information and associated knowledge to ensure an effective management of risk demands paying greater attention both to the understanding of the effects of randomness in projects and to the learning of available means to capture this variability. The present work focuses on the second issue and introduces a framework to classify techniques supporting project risk management based on their purpose and the context for which they are most suitable. The main aim is incrementing communication and knowledge enabling a quantification of risk. The scheme is general and can be applied to

would be of great value to validate and refine the framework.

assessing, and controlling the associated risks.

very diverse projects in numerous industries.

Sabrina Grimaldi, Carlo Rafele and Anna Corinna Cagliano *Department of Management and Production Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy* 
