Brian Rommes, PMP
This session treats risk management as both a technical discipline and a leadership opportunity.
Participants work on a real project of their own throughout the session. We cover how to identify threats and opportunities, how to set risk thresholds and definitions a team can agree on, and how to build a register and mitigation plan that drives decisions rather than documenting them afterward.
We then examine three risks: AI embedded in vendor products, unapproved AI use by project team members, and whether AI-assisted decisions can be audited later. Examples come from core lending platform delivery in a regulated financial services environment.
The session closes on leadership why capable project managers lose their footing when risk becomes real, what steadiness looks like to a team that is watching you, and how to carry these practices back into your own organization.
Participants should bring a current project.
- Identify risks their current process tends to miss, including the organizational and political reasons known risks go unreported.
- Build a risk register and mitigation plan for a real project, using probability, impact, and threshold definitions their own team can agree on.
- Evaluate three AI-related project risks most registers do not yet address and describe how regulated industries are treating each one.
- Recognize how their own response to risk affects whether the team reports risk early enough for anyone to act on it.
about the speaker
Brian Rommes, PMP
Brian Rommes is the founder of Ascendant Collaborative, a Louisville-based practice built around Projects, Processes, and People. He serves as a Director at Farm Credit Mid-America, where his team leads product and project initiatives across the association's core lending platforms loan accounting, Salesforce, and loan origination.
Earlier in his career he led digital implementations at Papa John's International supporting locations in 50 countries, and worked in clinical analytics, provider contracting, and release management at Humana. At the University of Louisville he teaches a twelve-week practical application project management course, walking students through a full project from initiation to closure, and he teaches operations management and business technology at Indiana University Southeast. Brian holds a Master's in Leadership and Management along with KCS and SDI Core Strengths credentials, and serves as President-Elect of the PMI Ketuckiana chapter.
