Reasons for the non-use of project risk tools and techniques

Project Risk Management plays an important part in determining project success and it is considered an essential activity for companies. The literature provides a vast amount of tools and techniques created to help project managers to deal with project risks. However in practice project managers use few tools and techniques. The aim of this research is to understand the reasons for the non-use of PRM tools and techniques by project managers when dealing with risks in the Swedish manufacturing sector. Project managers prefer to use qualitative tools and techniques when dealing with risks while most of the tools and techniques for quantitative risk analysis are not used. Project managers tend to heavily rely on intuition and past experience. This research extends prior literature by providing evidence on the use and non-use of PRM tools and techniques and the reasons for their non-use in a sector where there is a lack of research. Finally two more reasons are discovered and can contribute to a better understanding of the existing gap between theory and practice.