Manage risks

PM Responsible

As the project manager, you are accountable that the following items are identified, documented, followed up and approved:

Requirements

Solutions

Budget

Planning

Responsibility assignments

Actions

Risks

Assumptions

Changes

Dependencies

Issues

Communications

Documentation

Decisions

Manage Risks

Introduction

Risks are events that may happen (or not) with impacts on the project and even on the company.

Defining risks starts from the beginning of the project (pre-project) but the process describing how to manage the project's risks are in the project charter. It defines:

who can report a risk (business and IT),
who is responsible to keep a track of them (project manager),
how to determine their importance,
from which importance it is required to initiate actions to reduce the impact and/or the probability (medium and high),
in which comities they are reviewed (and the frequency),
the format of the risks' log

Define

Risk is defined by an issue (description, origin, probability to occur) and impacts (description, level, area).

The probability to occur is between 1 (low) and 4 (high).

The area of the impact could be cost, scope, planning and/or quality.

The level of the impact could be low (1), medium (2), compromise success criteria (3) or more than 10% of the company's CA (4).

Action

Depending on the probability and on the level, a score is deducted:

Probability	Impact Low	Impact Medium	Impact Success criteria	Impact Company
1	Low	Low	Medium	Medium
2	Low	Medium	Medium	High
3	Medium	Medium	High	High
4	Medium	High	High	High

When the score is from medium to high, actions must be taken to reduce either the risk's probability or the impact's level.

This actions must monitored also when following up risks.

Exemple of risks log

Cf page.