Risk analysis

- Real life is often a bit random, scattered, and even chaotic. While the steps for managing risk, identification, analysis, and response, flow nicely on paper, when working with stakeholders on a live project, things can jump around. As you start to analyze the risks you've identified, people will try to derive response approaches or jump back to identifying more risks. Don't worry, that's okay.

Here are a few very common instances when the risk management process doesn't flow smoothly. These occur during real world risk analysis processing and you need to be sure the conversations don't become too chaotic. First, your team may leap to conclusions and decide to change scope to avoid identified risks. As you start to discuss risks, your stakeholders may determine that some risks will likely have a high impact for your project.

Almost always your team will start to determine ways to respond to the risk. If you find a reasonable way to address the risks, your team will move on. If not, it's common for the team to talk about a different way to address project scope or even reduce scope to avoid the risk. Let them go through this process. Otherwise, you might have distracted stakeholders who aren't engaged in assessing other risks as they keep thinking about this dangerous risk that might hurt your project.

Second thing to look for, determining that risk is low impact without thorough analysis. Beware of instances where your team believes a risk is low impact, but they have not discussed the possibilities thoroughly. You should guide your team to look at all the ways a risk can impact your project. Ensure you look at scope, schedule, cost, and quality. Third, watch for risks that are improperly discarded because your team considers the risk too difficult to address.

Your job as a project manager is to ensure your team pays appropriate attention to the risks you've identified. When you believe a risk is being discarded because handling it's too hard, it's time for you to restore discipline. Ensure an assessment of the risk potential impacts and the probability of occurrence are captured. You can do research to prepare to address the risk during the response stage of risk management. These, and how to address other issues with risk analysis in the real world are flow-charted in a template I've included in the exercise files for the course.

Discussing risk often surfaces emotions, which can reduce your team's sense of discipline. Let people surface their concerns and jump around with their thoughts, but be sure the appropriate risk analysis is completed and you'll be prepared to handle risks on your project. And if you do that well, you'll have a little less chaos in your life.