Case Study: Supply Chain Risk Management--Project Monitoring at the SCMS Project

By 2012, SCMS had offices in 16 countries and had undergone an aggressive decentralization program that started three years earlier. The project turned to risk management as a way to monitor its country programs. Risk management involves a focus on risk events and the mechanisms driving the risk events. Across many of the countries, the underlying causes of risks and the adverse risk events were both similar. The SCMS team provided general support to field offices, including additional bandwidth for country projects, when needed, and identifying and addressing common challenges across countries. Risk management appeared to be one approach that could help formalize a process of addressing the challenges. The first attempt at risk management involved a pilot for a traditional risk management approach, which included listing the risk events, evaluating their likelihood and impact, and formalizing plans to address the identified risks. However, the pilot was unsuccessful due to the technical, labor-intensive, and unappealing nature of the exercise. Country directors found the approach to be more beneficial for headquarters' purposes than for the country programs. The second attempt at risk management focused on developing a dashboard tool surrounding risk. The risk management tool, referred to as a colored dashboard or Rasta Fari template, was implemented in Microsoft Excel and had defined management areas as columns, with each country assigned to a row. Each cell, representing the management area within a country, was designated one of three colors: red for serious risks existing, yellow for some issues to watch for, and green for no significant issues. The management areas and sub-areas on the tool included global supply chain, health systems strengthening, financial management, staffing, harmonization with other supply chain projects, customer relationship management, communication, and other. The process for using the dashboard involved country directors filling out the colored dashboard for their country every three months, using the color key to assess risks to the SCMS program that could affect supply chain performance and client satisfaction. A program management officer reviewed the dashboard, and the PMO and country director discussed what action to take, especially the items in red. The benefits of the risk management approach were primarily subjective, with headquarters thinking it provided an agenda for discussions with country offices and identified a wide range of risks. However, the approach continued to pose challenges, including country directors not always responding quickly and not requiring justification for a country's assessment of green within a management area.