To highlight one more time how we often do ourselves more harm than good, we will have one more short case of how we can make an already risky situation even worse.

Consider the vehicle manufacturer that is working a project to meet a new and more stringent pollution emissions regulatory target from the government.  To meet the regulatory requirements requires hardware and software changes which will also have implications for the manufacturing processes.  There are risks with this project as with all projects to meet the delivery date with the obligatory quality and meeting these new regulatory targets. There is always risk until we have completed the project.

This company also had recently purchased another vehicle brand for their portfolio. The production sites of the newly acquired product were in other geographic regions distant from the purchasing company. The two companies had some similar product offerings and some divergent product offerings as well.

The company decides to simultaneously take on a merging of the common areas of the manufacturing sites along with the emission project which cannot be delayed.  We now have a whole scale change to the manufacturing processes and locations on top of the risks associated with meeting the regulatory requirements.  The probability of total success is the product of the probability of each of the projects.  We have tangled up our hard date emissions project with additional baggage that can impact success.