BACKGROUND Acme Corporation embarked on an optimistic project to develop a new product for the marketplace. Acme's scientic community made a technical breakthrough, and now the project appears to be in the development stage, more than being pure or applied research. The product is considered to be high tech. If the product can be launched within the next four months, Acme expects to dominate the market for at least a year or so until the competition catches up. Marketing has stated that the product must sell for not more than $150 to $160 per unit to be the cost-focused market leader. Acme uses a project management methodology for all multifunctional pro- jects. The methodology has six life-cycle phases: Preliminary planning Detailed planning Executionidesign selection Prototyping Testingfbuyo' Production mus-me: At the end of each life-cycle phase, a gatelphase review meeting is held with the project sponsor and other appropriate stakeholders. Gate review meetings are formal meetings. The company has demonstrated success following this method- ology for managing projects. At the end of the second life-cycle stage of this project. detailed planning. a meeting is held with just the project manager and the project sponsor. The purpose of the meeting is to review the detailed plan and identify any future problem areas that will require involvement by the project sponsor. THE MEETING Sponsor: \"1 simply do not understand this document you sent me titled 'Risk Management Plan.' All I see is a work breakdown structure with work pack- ages at level 5 of the WBS accompanied by almost [00 risk events. Why am I looking at more than 100 risk events? Furthermore. they're not categorized in any manner. Doesn't our project management methodology provide any guidance on how to do this?\" PM: \"All of these risk events can and will impact the design of the nal product. We must be sure we select the right design at the lowest risk. Unfortunately. our project management methodology does not include any provisions or guidance on how to develop a risk management plan. Perhaps it should." Sponsor: \"1 see no reason for an in-depth analysis of IOO or so risk events. That's too many. Where are the probabilities and expected outcomes or damages?" PM: \"My team will not be assigning probabilities or damages until we get closer to prototype development. Some of these risk events may go away altogether.\" Sponsor: \"Why spend all of this time and money on risk identication if the risks can go away next month? You've spent too much money doing this. If you spend the same amount of money on all of the risk management steps. then we'll be way over budget." PM: \"We haven't looked at the other risk management steps yet. but I believe all of the remaining steps will require less than 10 percent of the budget we used for risk identication. We'll stay on budget.&quot