Project Risk Management

PROJECT RISK
MANAGEMENT

Abstract
BBC was involved in a major digital media initiative fiasco and in this report the IT system of
the company was evaluated along with giving appropriate analysis. The aim of the DMI
Implementation will be evaluated and the factors that led to the failure of the implementation
will be analysed. The risk factors will also be determined and appropriate monitoring and
evaluation techniques that could have be used will be ascertained. A project risk management
plan will be developed accordingly.

Table of Contents
Abstract............................................................................................................................................2
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
Aims and Goals............................................................................................................................4
Retrospective Research................................................................................................................5
Risk Management Methodology Adopted...................................................................................6
Internal and External Context......................................................................................................7
Risk Assessment..........................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
BBC i.e. British Broadcasting Corporation is a major public service broadcaster and is
one of the oldest broadcasting organization as well (Hearn, Swan and Geels, 2019). In the year
2008, BBC decided to launch a digital media initiative under which the production process was
intended to be modernised and a connected production medium through digitalization was
intended to be implemented.
Ashley Highfield, director of BBC decided to implement the scheme of DMI and
approved the funding of £81 million. The project was outsourced to another technology service
provider Siemens and it was expected that the cost would be reduced by £18 million (Digital
Media Initiative, 2019). However, the contract became too expensive because the cost was rising
and the number of technical problems were also continuously increasing (BBC's Digital Media
Initiative failed because of more than poor oversight, 2015). This caused BBC huge losses and
when a new DMI plan was formulated, it was again rejected by the BBC finance committee and
it was furhter critcised by the National Audit Office. This made BBC again outsource the entire
project to 3 IT companies i.e. Computacentre, Meidasmiths and Vidispine but ultimately the
project was cancelled in the year 2013.
This inefficient applicability of the DMI led to huge losses for the company and the
project was declared to be a complete failure (Kelly, 2019). In the current report, the risk
assessment will be done on the basis of PMBOK methodology and this will help in controlling
and determining the risk factors that are associated with the organization. This will help in
identifying causes behind failure in the DMI system implementation and the entire project risk
assessment will be detailed in the report wit adequate conclusion.
Aims and Goals
The DMI implementation by BBC was done so that the entire system could be digitalised and the
operation of BBC could be streamlined towards a tapeless and better workflow. Therefore, the
decision to implement DMI and its subsequent failure will be the main aspect of analysis in the
report. The major aim of this report will be to identify the causes behind the project failure and
why the DMI system i.e. the digitalization project implemented at BBC Corporation became
redundant and could not achieve the objective behind it (Chowdhury, 2019). The factors behind
the increased cost that was caused will be analysed and interpreted in the report. The objectives
can be categorized in the following points: