Uncertainty Management – A Methodological Framework Beyond “The Six W's”

Many projects have to live with high uncertainty because of stakeholders with different demands to the project objectives, project owners who change their mind in the middle of the execution phase and changes in the market or in regulations from the government. Dealing with uncertainty must therefore be an ongoing process and will require a change in focus during the project life cycle. The traditional approach of looking towards the project objective and stick to the plan will be difficult for projects with long timespan and high uncertainty. We will present a framework for projects that have high uncertainty over the project's life cycle. We suggest a framework for uncertainty management consisting of 2 steps for preparing the process, a 5 step group process for identifying, analysing and developing measures for exploiting or controlling the uncertainty and 2 steps for follow up the uncertainty over the project life cycle. This paper has four parts. Firstly, rationality and methodology are presented. In the second part we outline some of the theory, in part three is the nine step framework for identifying, analysing and managing uncertainty described (how). And finally, we present our conclusion and wind up the main ideas that we have presented.