I had lunch today with Professor Kenn Sullivan at ASU. I first met Kenn when he gave a presentation on project management to my local PMI chapter. One of the primary conclusions of Kenn’s research is that project performance improves where there is accountability for results, and that accountability improves when risks have clear owners and consequences for failure (i.e. not mitigated). To make this work, the project manager asks each project team member what are the risks that they don’t control. For example, a vendor may be responsible for installing cable at a customer’s location. A risk the vendor does not control is if the customer will open the building when the vendor arrives. The project manager accumulates these risks in the risk register. As part of the planning process, the project manager coordinates a discussion of the vendor’s risk with the person who can resolve the risk, such as facilities. Facilities needs to own the risk mitigation, with clear consequences for not meeting requirements. For example, it may cost the vendor an additional $1,000 to install cable to cover the overtime charges for starting late, or for having to come the next day. This amount would be charged to facilities if they do not meet the agreed upon risk management plan.

However, instead of Facilities or the Vendor, the risk register should list an actual person. So if Jim Hodges of Facilities is responsible for addressing the vendor’s risk, Jim will be responsible for costing Facilities $1,000 if he doesn’t fulfill his assignment.

To make this process work, the risk register must be reviewed regularly by the project. Kenn told me of one project where the program manager had every team member responsible for a risk to sign off that they had reviewed the risk register. This simple act of reviewing the risk register led to higher levels of accountability.

This sounds simple, but may be challenging in practice. Human nature is to run from accountability. It takes a savvy project manager to create a system of accountability while dealing with the politics in many organizations. But project performance depends upon it. Without accountability, how can the project succeed?