How a Courtroom Taught Us the Value of Risk Management Culture

When teams stop chasing perfect plans and start owning imperfect truths,
projects move faster, not by luck, but by clarity.

It was a Friday morning when a Project Manager found herself sitting in a crowded courtroom. Not her case, she was just there to support a friend. The place had a strange energy. Papers rustling, people whispering, the judge’s gavel cutting through every now and then. She leaned toward her friend and whispered, “Feels tense in here… like everyone’s waiting for something to blow up.” The opposing lawyer went first. He spoke with so much confidence:

The other side hesitated. A ripple went through the audience. Another question came: “And what about the dependency on those documents, are you assuming they’ll arrive on time?” Suddenly, the confident lawyer stumbled. His voice lost the edge. The judge frowned. People started whispering. What looked perfect a few minutes ago was now full of cracks. The Project Manager leaned back and thought, This is exactly what happens in our projects. Plans look solid until someone asks the hard questions. Then boom, it all unravels.

She remembered the past: supplier team plans falling apart because dependencies weren’t listed. Assumptions left unspoken. Tech and non-tech risks brushed aside. And then halfway through, the customer team would ask, “Why are we hearing about this now?” By then it was too late. Watching that courtroom was like watching her own project reviews replayed.

Walking out, she told her friend, “That wasn’t just a trial, it was a mirror. We lose projects the same way… by hiding what could go wrong.” Back at work, she decided to flip things around. In the next planning session, she looked at her team and said, “Okay, no more perfect-looking slides with hidden cracks. I want every dependency and assumption on the table. All of it. Even if it makes the plan look messy.” One engineer raised a hand. “But won’t that scare the customer team?”She smiled. “No. Surprises in the middle scare them more.”

From then on, she and the leads began training and sensitizing team members to make plans that weren’t just ‘happy path’ scenarios. They started setting more realistic expectations with the customer team, “Here’s what we know, here’s what we’re assuming, and here’s where we’ll need you to align with us.”

She also pushed for a consolidated log of learnings across projects. “If we tripped on a risk once, why should we trip again?” And in workshops with tech leads, she’d joke, “Think like that lawyer in court, what assumptions will the judge grill you on if you don’t declare them?” People laughed, but the point stuck.

And when they finally measured the outcomes over a few months, something clear showed up: projects were running close to 10% faster. Not because people were rushing, but because there were fewer last-minute shocks.

10%

That courtroom day never left her. She kept replaying the moment the lawyer’s case fell apart. He hadn’t lost because he didn’t work hard. He lost because he left too much unsaid. And projects collapse for the same reason.

Plans don’t fail because of what’s in them, they fail because of what’s missing. By building a culture of risk management, through training, expectation-setting, shared learnings, and tech lead workshops, the supplier team finally stopped making fragile promises. They built something stronger: trust, predictability, and real outcomes. If you’re ready to turn hidden assumptions into clarity and fragile promises into predictable outcomes, contact us at info@wonderbiz.in