<< Back

Are You Fully Managing Risk?

Project Management Essentials

Managing Risk

No one, especially project managers and sponsors, like surprises and project managers are responsible for understanding potential surprises and risks in their projects. I’ve shared some ideas on how to creatively consider risk exposure in projects and how to approach risk management.

However, when it comes to having discussions with your sponsor about risk, you want to focus on building credibility and reducing anxiety. Concentrate on these four areas:

Be Prepared for Known Risks

You need to plan for and mitigate risks throughout your project. To identify potential risks, engage your team and project stakeholders to get a comprehensive picture. It’s easy to overlook “knowable” risks if you aren’t casting the net wide enough.

As you identify risks, document them and conduct both a qualitative and if possible, quantitative analysis for each. If your organization doesn’t have a standard risk identification template that supports capturing and analyzing risks, check out ProjectManagement.com. PMI members get free access to all PM templates, including this risk identification template. Or contact me and I’ll send you a sample template.

Manage Organization Change at a Detailed Level

Organization change is a huge area of risk that project managers ignore at their own peril. Most of us have experienced an implementation where the project manager didn’t consider change management and how a project would impact various teams in the organization. The receiving team was given a brief presentation just days before the new system or process was implemented. No one knew what to expect or what to do and the implementation created chaos. Not a good strategy for protecting your project or your sponsor from risk.

To reduce the risk from organizational change, you need to understand at a detailed level the impact of your project and who will be affected. Create a worksheet of the current and future state of major areas of functionality and identify the specific work needed to implement that future state for each team impacted by the change.
* What are the downstream impacts? Do procedures need to be modified, does documentation need to be updated, will reports need to be changed, do websites and links need to be modified, does a team require training?
* Who needs to be aware of the changes? Do specific groups need to be briefed, should change champions be engaged to prepare their organizations, are updates needed for support FAQs and scripts?

If you want to become a stronger project manager, learn more about change management and find resources to help improve your capabilities. Read my other blogs on change management and contact me if you are interested in a change assessment template.

React Quickly to Emerging Problems

When the unexpected hits, time is not on your side. We have all experienced “unknown” risks in our projects. You realize that your “subject matter expert” isn’t much of an expert! or a team member underestimated the difficulty of completing a deliverable and now your time and cost estimates aren’t adequate. Whatever the problem, it’s important to react with speed and focus to understand the issue, to find ways to mitigate the problem and to communicate those to your sponsor.

Communicate Risks Regularly

Being transparent about project risk requires some courage. Often, project managers don’t want to share bad news and “hope” to figure things out. When it comes to project risks, that’s not a winning strategy and it won’t build credibility with your sponsor.

To communicate effectively, highlight project risks and mitigation planning as part of your regular status reporting for sponsors and stakeholders. As new risks come up, make your sponsor aware and let them know you are working on mitigation plans. This reduces the “surprise” element for your sponsor and often they can accelerate your risk mitigation efforts. Risk management is a good area to focus some of your sponsor’s time, so be courageous!

Practicing these risk management tactics builds your credibility and demonstrates a level of awareness and leadership that sponsors will appreciate.

Did you find this tip helpful? Share my Transformation Tips blog with your colleagues and share your comments with me!

Additional Resources

Interested in learning more about topics like this one? Check out upcoming events on our chapter calendar. Sign up for one of our upcoming meetings, roundtables, or workshops – a selection of which are virtual. Earn your PDUs through PMI Mile Hi Chapter!

About the Author

Annette Leazer is a transformation consultant working with executives to create more effective operations and greater business value. Both vision and execution are key to motivate people to transform work. She guides leaders to develop transformation vision and strategy, establish program structure and oversight, and build and coach teams to be successful. She also shares tips, resources and leading practices as a project management mentor and through her Transformation Tips blog.

Search

View the archives

Join the PMI organisation and select PMI Mile Hi as your chapter.

Add to the waitlist