Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The Agile PrepCast. PDU for PMP:: Cornelius Fichtner and Dr. David Hillson (We're pointing at Disneyworld on the map) This interview with Dr. David Hillson was recorded at the 2015 PMI Global Congress in Orlando, Florida. We discuss his paper and presentation "Weight Loss For Risky Projects". Here is the paper's definition of Risk Obesity: “Risk obesity” occurs when there is too much risk in the system, resulting from uncontrolled risk appetite (Hillson, 2014). This can affect the business as a whole if strategic risk-taking decisions by the senior management team lead to risk exposure that is greater than the organization can manage. But risk obesity can also occur at the project level, when a particular project is carrying levels of risk that are too high, posing a significant threat to the project’s success. Each of the characteristics of physical obesity has parallels in risk obesity, where we accumulate excessive risk exposure that threatens the ongoing health of our project, and that may ultimately be terminal. Risk obesity also makes other risk ailments more likely, as high levels of risk exposure challenge the ability of our risk management processes to cope. The main cause of risk obesity is an uncontrolled or inappropriate risk appetite (Hillson and Murray-Webster, 2012), leading us to take on too much risk without the ability to digest it and deal with it effectively. It is also possible in some cases that there is a built-in tendency to risk obesity arising from the “organizational DNA,” with a corporate ethos and culture that lead to excessive risk-taking. The good news for projects suffering from risk obesity is that it is both treatable and preventable. This paper provides clear diagnostic symptoms to determine whether a project is risk obese, as well as proven treatment options. Episode Transcript Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome back to the Project Management Podcast at www.pm-podcast.com. We are coming to you live from the PMI 2015 Global Congress in Orlando, Florida. Disneyworld is here. We are in the Exhibit Hall and maybe you can hear it in the background, the exhibitors are starting to take down the tables. With me is Dr. David Hillson. Good afternoon, David. David Hillson: Hello, Cornelius. Nice to be with you again. Cornelius Fichtner: Thank you. It's seems like you're doing a lot of these every congress. David Hillson: Well, I've got lots of things to say and you want to hear about them. So I'm very pleased about that. Thank you.  Cornelius Fichtner: Yes. One thing I really want to hear you talk about is future trends. What do you see ahead of us for project managers? David Hillson: I'm worried about the future trend because in a number of professional associations and in a number of publications and journals, I see an increasing emphasis on the project manager taking a business role or a strategic perspective and lifting their gaze above the project and concentrating on business value and managing senior stakeholders and creating value for the organization. And what worries me is that this is not the business of managing projects. This is the role of the project sponsor, the role of the organization. Managing projects is a tough call and we need people who are project managers to focus on delivering deliverables, to creating the ability to generate benefits and value through the outcomes of our projects. And it just worried me that organizations are encouraging their project managers to lift their sites and lose focus on the actual management of projects.  Cornelius Fichtner: Interesting. That is an interesting counterpoint to everything that PMI seems to be doing at this point. David Hillson: Oh dear. And I'm a PMI fellow- Cornelius Fichtner: Yes. I