Risk Management in Your Project Plan Too
The risk management tools help you to assess risks by providing a process and structure to gather and analyze the results. The risk management tools help you to identify risks, rank them for impact and probability, and obtain a consensus on the results with the stakeholders and subject matter that identified them. It is a very easy process to perform, is customizable and repeatable. Once the analysis is complete the risks are logged into a risk log that is intended to be reviewed periodically until the risk no longer exists. The risk log is included in the ‘risk management tools'. However this is not all you need to do.
What do you do after you have identified your risks?
There is a few more management steps needed in order to ensure your project is successful. By success I mean delivered on time, within budget and meet or exceed your customer's expectations. Once you have assessed the risks and logged them in the risk log, which includes a high level statement on the mitigation plan, you also need to document the tasks and milestones in your project plan that you will implement as a safeguard that allows you to more easily monitor and evaluate risks during the project life cycle.
Visibility is essential to successful monitoring and risk mitigation
If you do not have the risk tasks in your project plan then they will be out of sight and out of mind. It is best to plan for the unknown and implement strategies you are doing to control the risks in order to limit their possibility of occurring.
Most people build the project plan with tasks of known work that needs to be completed. What you also need to do is add the risk tasks and milestones that you will perform to implement policies & controls. The tasks and/or milestones added into the project plan are specific to managing the project risks and not the planned work to deliver the project. These risk tasks and/or milestones will be performed during the project life cycle at specified times and are a part of your risk mitigation process. In your regular project plan review meetings, or weekly status meetings, you will monitor and evaluate the risks from the risk log and the project plan. The risk log identifies specific risks and the project plan contains the tasks that will be performed to mitigate the risks. The plan will have the start and finish of the mitigation activity or a milestone flagging an event that is a part of your mitigation strategy. For example, if a risk is for procurement to place the order to equipment, then a task in the plan may be to confirm procurement placed order. If the order is not placed by a certain date the project is in jeopardy of not meeting the end date, since the equipment must arrive by a certain date and be configured. The order must be placed by a certain date in order to ensure it arrives in time. The simple risk task of following up with procurement will ensure that the risk is managed and the project end date is not jeopardized.
So, when you manage risks, do more that an analysis. Add risks tasks and milestones into your project plan so that you can ensure your project is successful.Visit http://www.e-projectmanagers.com for free project management templates and successful project management resources. To learn more about setting up your project schedule visit http://www.createandmanageschedules.com
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/project-management-articles/risk-management-in-your-project-plan-too-5235323.html
About the AuthorDora Tarver runs the E-projectmanger.com website and help people find their for complicated project management tasks.
