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Project Risk management
Project Risk management
Risk Identification
Introduction
Have you ever worked on a really tough assignment or project and you got increasingly frustrated? In that moment you may have asked yourself what the risk would be if you did poorly on it or didn’t complete it to the fullest. You tend to go over outcomes like, “how low will my grade drop”, “will I still be able to get that raise if I do not perform as well on this project”, “will I still pass my class”. When you ask yourself these questions, it is a part of identifying risks for whatever you are working on. As a project manager, identifying risks is something that you will do for every project you take on. In this blog post, I will show you how to identify the risks of a project.
Risk Assessment
Firstly, project risk assessment is a critical part of project management. Identifying risks means that you are performing a process that exposes potential risks that can either hurt or enhance a project. There are many types of risks that you can encounter. These risks include: technical, financial, schedule, resource, political, and environmental risks. When you identify potential risks of a project and determine their potential impacts, you can form strategies to help aid in the project’s success. This is something that you do not want to take lightly, as you can run into some big trouble without performing risk assessments and making mitigation plans. This can include lawsuits, loss of revenue, loss of customers, employee turnover, and damage to the company’s reputation.
Tools and Techniques to Identifying Risks
At the start of the identification process, you may want to review project documentation, recent and historical information related to the organization, and assumptions that might affect the project. This information can be discussed in meetings that are designated for the project’s risks. After the initial meeting, the project team can then use other techniques for information gathering to expose other potential risks. Since risk identification is important in project management, there are some tools that you can use to help in identifying risks:
Brainstorming:
One of the first things that you can do with the team is to conduct a meeting to discuss any doubts, concerns, and risks that they may have. By doing this, you will be able to see any potential challenges/ risks early in the project and address them. When brainstorming, you may want to consider using the Delphi technique. The Delphi technique is used to help eliminate any negative group interactions and effects.
Interviews:
You can conduct interviews face-to-face, via email, or virtually. Usually this is conducted one-on-one with team members. You will ask them what their concerns are and any risks that they can see. By interviewing different people, you can also learn if they have previous experience in similar projects to get a heads up on some challenges they may have faced. Also, you can get insight on the customer if someone has worked with them before.
Make a List of Common Risks:
You should list out the main risks that are associated with your project that you are already aware of. This way you will be able to make contingency plans for them early on. For example, you may be worried about a lack of customer interest, poor sales, design flaws that lead to customer complaints, a product recall, etc.
Review Project Dependencies:
You do not want to run the risk of having dependency delays. When you are identifying the risks of the project, know the project dependencies to limit the potential for these delays. You should be able to start a timeline for the potential risks for each dependency. For example, certain parts of a project may need approval before continuing to the next part. If your boss is going on vacation, you do not want to wait until the last minute to get the approval.
A Risk Assessment Tool:
To help you stay organized and less overwhelmed by the risk identification process, there are many tools out there to help you.
A tool that you should use is a risk register. “A risk register is a document that contains results of various risk management processes” (Schwalbe). This can be stored in a spreadsheet or table. This tool is to document any potential risk events that are discovered and related information. Risk events are potential events that will have a negative or positive impact on the project. These can include supply shortages, strikes, delays to complete work, completing work earlier than expected, good publicity.
Conclusion
Project risk management is a part of project management that should be taken seriously. Performing risk assessments will help identify potential risks that can impact the project. To avoid consequences of poor risk assessment, you can use several methods and tools to aid in identifying risks. Consider brainstorming with the project team, one-on-one interviews, listing common risks, reviewing project dependencies, and using more advanced risk assessment tools like a risk register. Identifying these risks early on will be beneficial to the project and help the project run smoother.
Resources
Information Technology Project Management Textbook, e9, Schwalbe, Kathy.
"Risk Management: How to Identify, Analyze, and Mitigate Project Risk"
https://day.io/blog/risk-management-how-to-identify-analyze-and-mitigate-project-risk/
"Risk Identification: Combining the Tools to Deliver the Goods"
https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/risk-identification-life-cycle-tools-7784
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