Project risk management is critical, and yet it is often managed incorrectly. Here are actions you can take to avoid common risk management issues on your projects.
Avoid dropping scope items because risks are present. Your stakeholders may identify substantial risks with some of your project’s scope elements. Don’t get spooked and drop those scope items to avoid risk. Give your team the time for research to determine if viable risk responses are available. This may mean bringing in experts to look at the risk and ways to address it. In addition, perform an analysis to determine whether the value of the scope item is worth the cost of any risk mitigation that may be proposed.
Don’t rush to rate a risk as low impact. Be sure to thoroughly evaluate a risk before rating it as low impact. Guide your team to consider all the ways a risk can impact your project. Ensure that they look at scope, schedule, cost, and quality. Incorrect low-impact ratings are usually due to false assumptions about business processes. Ensure knowledgeable business personnel examine the risk and agree with your low-impact rating. Keep these risks in your risk log, rather than deleting them as irrelevant. Should one of those low-impact risks occur, you can compare the actual impact to what was expected when you performed your risk analysis. Any variations can be captured in your lessons learned documentation and risk logs.
Don’t discard risks because they’re too difficult to address. As a project manager, you must ensure your team pays appropriate attention to the risks you’ve identified. Suppose you hear a comment like “There’s nothing we can do about that, so let’s discard this risk.” If you think your team is ignoring risks, it’s time for you to restore discipline. Ensure your team and business leaders are aware of the risk and its potential impacts. Dedicate time to evaluate actions that could be taken. It’s rare to find a risk without some way to reduce its probability. Extra reviews or research during the project usually help. Make sure you team examine all risks with the rigour your business deserves.
Allow for emotions to surface, but don’t let emotions interrupt the risk process. Discussing risk may raise emotions, which is to be expected. Don’t suppress them. At the same time, ensure they don’t distract your team from focusing on the fundamentals of risk management. Return your team’s focus to the risk fundamentals that are as easy as PIE – the probability of an impact as a result of a specific event – that could affect your project.
For more about managing risk, check out this LinkedIn Learning Risk Management Foundations course.