Risk Management

Risk is an uncertain event that help or hurt your project. Risk itself isn’t a bad thing, it’s the impact of the risk event that hurts. Some risks can actually help your project if they happen – these are positive risk events. The project manager and the project team must constantly be on the lookout for risk events in the project. Once risks have been identified the risks are recorded, analyzed, and planned for. And then it’s constant monitoring of the risk events throughout the project’s life cycle.

The closer the project nears completion, the lower the project’s risk of failing becomes. However, if one of the identified risk events with a large impact does occur, it may deplete the risk contingency fund. Should this event happen, the project manager, and often the key project stakeholders, have to examine where the monies will come from to offset this risk event. In extreme situations the entire project may be cancelled, because of the expense of the risk event. Not fun.

As the project manager and the project team work through risk monitoring and control the results of their findings are documented in the risk register. As risks events come into fruition or pass out of the project the results are recorded in the risk register. New events, risk conditions, changes, and project conditions may all warrant updates to the risk register. The risk register, as you may suspect, becomes part of the organizational process assets so other project managers can learn from the identified risks and the outcomes of the risks within the current project.

There are six risk videos for this module of the PMP exam prep:

Planning for Risk Management

Identifying Positive and Negative Risks

Performing Qualitative Risk Analysis

Completing Quantitative Risk Analysis

Planning Risk Responses

Monitoring and Controlling Risk Events