Meeting and Managing Enterprise Augmented Reality Risks

As with other new technology introductions, enterprise Augmented Reality projects are fraught with familiar and new risks. To move forward with enterprise AR projects on reasonable budgets and schedules, it’s important to acknowledge the existence of risks and to find ways to creatively manage them.

Risk 101

Managers should take a short course on risk as part of their preparation for taking on Augmented Reality introduction projects. One of the first lessons in risk management offers different ways to classify and prioritize the risk types or sources. 

To my view, there are four classes of risk for enterprise Augmented Reality:

• Technological maturity risks
• Financial risks
• User acceptance risks 
• Regulatory/corporate policy risks

While this is good theory, in practice most risks are interconnected. Sometimes addressing one risk increases another.  Furthermore, the type of project will impact the number and type of risks within each class.

Bring in All the Project Stakeholders

Just as with other aspects of Augmented Reality, management of risks is a multi-disciplinary process. It’s important to have representatives of all the stakeholders in the discussion of risk and to keep them engaged as the project advances to monitor and adjust the risk assessment.

For example, a representative from your corporate finance group will have different perspectives than the representative of the labor union. The IT department will keep an eye on security and the safety managers will be looking for a different set of risk sources.

If possible, establish a shared risk tracking system for the project and maintain a schedule of regular reviews.  Some risks are reduced or eliminated quickly while others could escalate and derail a very promising project.

Where Rubber Meets the Road

In the end, all stakeholders realize that, as with any new technology introduction, there’s not a silver bullet that will remove all known and imagined risks. The best the project manager can aim for is reasonable management of risk.

Watch the AREA webinar archive to learn more about this topic and recommendations to project managers. AREA members will also be discussing how they have approached or address these risks in real world settings.