New Article: Why "Mitigate" Is the Most Dangerous Word on Your Risk Register
New Article: Stop Turning Projects Into Swiss Army Knives
Live Event: Why Your Risk Responses Are Probably Wrong
PM Best Practice: Effective Acceptance Has Three Parts
Tuesday Brief: Two new articles this week, and they arrive at the same idea from opposite ends of the project. Russ Parker opens the risk register and finds a response column full of verbs nobody actually chose. Ronald B. Smith looks at scope and finds a project carrying tools nobody actually approved. On Wednesday, Russ brings the decision logic that keeps "mitigate" from being the answer by default.
New Article: Why "Mitigate" Is the Most Dangerous Word on Your Risk Register
Open your last risk register and read down the response column. Russ Parker's wager is that you'll see the same word again and again, and that it got there by reflex rather than by decision. He argues that mitigate is supposed to be the verdict you reach after ruling out the other options, not the box you tick to look busy, and he draws a hard line between accepting a risk on purpose and simply never dealing with it. He also names the four tells that you're defaulting, including the one most registers fail: zero opportunities logged, as though upside weren't also a risk.
New Article: Stop Turning Projects Into Swiss Army Knives
Ronald B. Smith takes the folding multitool as his model for how scope creep actually shows up. No single request looks like a threat. A reporting tweak, one more integration, an hour of work at most. His point is that every fold-out tool adds weight and introduces another hinge, and hinges are where things break. Versatility and effectiveness turn out to be different qualities, and the sharpest projects are the ones that stay a blade.
Live Event (7/29): Why Your Risk Responses Are Probably Wrong
Russell Parker, PMP, PMI-RMP, goes past the list of response strategies and into the part that rarely gets taught, which is how to choose between them. He covers threats and opportunities both, works through how ownership gets assigned, and shows how to document your reasoning so it survives a conversation with senior leadership.
What You'll Learn:
The full menu of response strategies for threats and opportunities, including where escalate and accept cross over between the two
How to distinguish deliberate acceptance from acceptance by neglect
A structured decision sequence for selecting a response rather than defaulting to mitigate
How to separate the risk owner from the response owner and assign each correctly
🗓️ Wednesday, July 29, 2026 🕛 12:00 – 1:00 PM ET 📍 Live on Zoom 🏅 1 PDU (1 Ways of Working)
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Upcoming Live Events
MPUG hosts live events with leading experts on Wednesdays from 12:00pm - 1:00pm ET! MPUG members get access to live events where you get direct access to industry leaders, actionable insights, hands-on training, and opportunities to earn PDUs.
PM Best Practice: Effective Acceptance Has Three Parts
If a risk on your register is marked "accept," it should carry three things: a contingency reserve sized for the exposure, a trigger condition that tells you the risk is materializing, and a fallback plan for what you do when that trigger trips. An accept with none of those attached isn't a strategy. It's an open item you stopped tracking.
