Blog 6

 

What risk management boils down to is a way to ask, “what can possibly go wrong and how is it fixable?” Risk management tries to spot these problems early as opposed to having them catch people off guard during a project, once potential problems are identified it is then time to figure out which ones actually matter and to crate contingency plans for them. Whilst it doesn’t remove fear and uncertainty altogether it offers a level of comfort and gives less chance that a project can sent into a tailspin from one unexpected event.

The first steps in addressing risk management is to identify the potential risks, have your team seek out trouble or pain points before they show up unexpectedly. Teams need to be thorough and search through multiple areas in their project to find possible risks, areas such as project scope, budget and schedule. This provides a team with list of possible areas that may become problems down the line, fixing these issues is a later step.

Jotting down the risks leads to the next step in risk management which is the assessment of each risk. Each risk is different, and they would need varying levels of attention, to decide the most important risks team members must address – How Likely is it to happen? – If it does happen how bad would it be? This can be judged on ratings of Critical, Moderate or Low, this keeps the team focused on what the major risks are.

The responses to risks may vary but there are some common approaches such as: Change the plan, to avoid the risk completely, Mitigate the risk by shrinking the likelihood of it happening or by reducing the potential damage the risk could cause, Transfer it over to another department that would be more equipped to deal with it like an Insurance group, and lastly acceptance but keep a contingency plan in place for it case things to go wrong.

It should be noted that risks change as a project progresses, monitoring and control on these risks should be carried out by the project team in regular check-ins. As some risks fade out other unforeseen ones may take their place, by implementing monitoring and control teams can take stock on what responses are effective, what risks need to be updated, and it is also a method of keeping other employees and stakeholders up to date and informed on the progress of the project.

To sum up risk management is all about making a plan for unforeseen consequences, it is not a fool proof plan that ensure the entire project will go off without a hitch, but instead it gives the team a response for in case things do go wrong.