Expert Judgment

In the past few chapters, we have covered all of the tools and techniques used in Qualitative Risk Analysis. The last item in our list which we saw in the “Intro? Chapter is “Expert Judgment”

Expert judgment is included as a separate tool because; we are following the PMBOK 4th edition. Though expert judgment is used in almost every tool or technique in project management the PMBOK guide started referring to this as a separate technique only starting the 4th edition. Frankly speaking I could’ve clubbed this with any of the other tools because this chapter is going to be pretty short. But, for the same of uniformity (Each of the tool was given a separate chapter and this tool is very important) we are going to give Expert Judgment a separate chapter as well.

Expert Judgment

Expert Judgment refers to the decisions or suggestions given by knowledgeable experts during the various activities in qualitative risk analysis. The individuals who provide us with their expert judgment are called as “Experts”. This could include:

a. Individuals with similar project experience
b. Project team members who contribute to project planning and management activities
c. Specialists in risk management from outside the project

Expert judgment will be used during workshops, interviews or meetings when risk management activities are carried out. For ex: during the risk probability and impact assessment activity, the team comes together in a meeting to assess the probability and impact of each risk. During this meeting, our risk experts could share their views with the team thereby providing us with expert judgment.

One important thing we need to remember about expert judgment is – To filter out the bias of the experts. Some expert’s views could be biased towards their specific way of thinking and may be contrarian to how the project functions or from the majority view. In such cases, as the project manager we need to eliminate the bias and perform a reassessment of the risk without bias to ensure that we consider and/or do what is best for the project.

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