Ricardo Viana Vargas's Blog, page 9

Managing Risks with ROAM

In this week’s episode, Ricardo introduces the concept of ROAM Risk (Resolved, Owned, Accepted, Mitigated / Minimized). The process of traversing (ROAMing) risks is a quick way to categorize and act on the relevant risks. This process is widely adopted in agile models such as SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), mainly during the planning of increments or PI Planning.

How to Become Optimist if you are Surrounded by Pessimism

In this week's episode, Ricardo talks about being optimistic in a pessimistic work environment. He addresses that one of the leading causes of pessimism is our inability to understand that what we are not able to control much, and this uncertainty is often counterintuitive. This inability to control everything usually generates an ever more distorted and pessimistic view of reality.

Organizational and Personal Resilience: The Ability to Cope with Change

In this episode, Ricardo discusses the concept of organizational and personal resilience. The issue becomes even more critical when we are faced with the uncertainty of an unprecedented crisis that we are having with the coronavirus. In this sense, the rapid recovery capacity becomes a critical factor for companies, governments and professionals. The infographic referred on this episode is available for download here.

Covid-19: Assessment and Action Plan

In this episode, Ricardo explains the assessment he developed to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 Outbreak in your project. He shares a 20 statements assessment that helps the evaluation of the potential exposure of your project to the implications of the COVID-19. He also shares actions we should put in place to protect the team and the reduce the damage in the project work. The video and the assessments are under the Creative Commons licence and can be shared and used freely. You can watch the video and download the assessment at http://rvarg.as/covid19

Kill that Project: Why it is so hard to decide and act when things go wrong- Part 2 of 2

In the second episode of the series, Ricardo discusses the 5-step approach he takes when he needs to decide and act to eliminate a project that is bound to fail.

Kill that Project: Why it is so hard to decide and act when things go wrong - Part 1 of 2

In this episode, Ricardo discusses four aspects that make the work of deciding and acting to cancel the project a real nightmare. It shows how fear, ego and inertia play an extremely negative role in decision making.

The impacts of Organization and Social Structures on Stakeholder Management

When leading transformation projects and massive changes within an organization structure, you need to be mindful about the changes that will happen on the social structure that is entwined with it and that is based on people's personal and cognitive values, not on formal roles.

Cognitive Bias: The Dunning Kruger Effect and Impostor Syndrome - Part 3 of 3

In the third and final episode of the cognitive bias series, Ricardo discusses two types of opposed behaviours: the Dunning Kruger effect and the Impostor Syndrome. Both are related to the actual competence x competence that we think we have. At Dunning Kruger, we find ourselves more competent than we are. In impostor syndrome, we have a hard time admitting the real competence we have. Both generate a loss of connection with reality that hinders and alters our decision making and perception of reality.

Cognitive Bias: The Birthday Paradox - Part 2 of 3

In the second episode of a 3-episode series, Ricardo provides the example of the birthday paradox, a simple probability exercise that demonstrated that the perceived probability of matching birthdays in a group tends to be much lower than what it is in reality.

Cognitive Bias: Understanding the Impact of Irrationality in our Decisions - Part 1 of 3

In the first episode of a 3-episode series, Ricardo discusses the main concepts of cognitive bias and why we often suffer from poor decisions that are made according to irrational criteria, disregarding knowledge and analytical thinking to make decisions.