I left the house without my underwear this morning!

It's not unusual that I'm not wearing any underwear. 3 or 4 days per week, I bike to work. However, my underwear is usually safely stowed in my messenger bag, nestled in with my trousers and shirt in the main compartment separated from my office laptop. Safely stored ready for use when I emerge from the office shower room 30 minutes later.

However, today was different, I was half way to work, cranking a big gear down 15 Ave just passing the city pound (ah hem, animal shelter) when it hit me. Oh no, I forgot to pack something. Aaaaaggggghhhhh! Never mind, I had traffic to worry about. I'd made it to 2nd Ave in Belltown about 5 minutes from my office when I suddenly remembered my contingency plan. I had a packet of spare clothes stuffed in the back of my filing cabinet. In fact, this contingency plan had been in place for 2 years and the packet of clothes had moved offices with me from Microsoft to Corbis recently. The question to be answered was, "is there a pair of underpants in the packet?"

The original risk was identified as "what if I get soaking wet cycling to work and my clothes inside my rucksack get wet?" The mitigation was to store a spare set of clothes at the office. The contingency plan was to use those clothes in the event of a drenching. Now despite Seattle's reputation as rain city, it actually doesn't rain all that often. Indeed it was dry today. But I made another mistake. I was too sleepy and though I remembered to pack my workout clothes for my personal training session at the gym beside the office, I forgot something small but vital. Luckily, I was able to invoke the contingency plan for a similar risk with the same outcome.

Risk management doesn't need to be difficult. It's just a case of thinking through likely outcomes - errors that can occur, external variations out with your immediate control that can occur - and then mitigating them and putting in place suitable recovery plans - contingencies. Luckily for me, forethought 2 years earlier saved my blushes.

Now I just need to remember to replenish the filing cabinet before it happens again ;-) Technorati tag: Agile, David+Anderson, Project+Management