Risk Assessment Workshet And Management Plan Template printable pdf download

Risk Assessment Worksheet and Management Plan

Customer/Project Name:

The Basics

There are four steps to assessing and managing risks, and effective risk management requires all four of them.

1. Identify the risks

2. Qualify the risks

Assess each risk for impact to the project if it does occur

b. Assess the likelihood of the risk occurrence

3. Plan for risks by creating a watchlist of risk triggers and how to handle the risk if it does occur

4. Monitor and manage risks

To adequately analyze risk, you'll need a detailed plan. So, the best time to perform an initial risk analysis is just prior to

starting the project. Don't make the mistake of thinking that risk analysis is a one-time task. You'll want to reevaluate the

risk management plan and your risk analysis from time to time throughout the project and whenever major deviations from

the plan occur.

Identify Risks

There are numerous ways to identify risks. If you have a limited amount of time, the best ways to identify risks are to:

•

Review the following project risk assessment

•

Review the project schedule task list looking for:

•

Tasks for which your team has no expertise. The duration and cost estimates for these tasks are more likely to

be inaccurate.

•

Duration and cost estimates that are aggressive. Ask the estimators how confident they are in their estimates,

especially for critical path tasks.

•

Situations where you have a limited number of resources that can do particular tasks and where those

resources are fully allocated, over allocated, or may become unavailable. A resource can become unavailable

when it leaves your organization or because of other commitments within the organization.

•

Tasks with several predecessors. The more dependencies a task has, the greater the likelihood of a delay.

•

Tasks with long durations or a lot of resources. The estimates for these larger tasks are more likely to be

inaccurate

•

Brainstorm and talk with the experts

•

All of your project risks may not be apparent from analyzing the project schedule. It's worth your time to call

a brainstorming meeting with key project resources and ask where they see the most risk to the project. You

may be surprised at what you uncover.

•

If you have some experienced project managers available, have them review your schedule. Also, talk with

people who have expertise in particular areas of the project. For example, if you're planning to use an outside

contractor, talk to people who have used that contractor or other contractors.

Qualify Risks

As you go through the following risk analysis, you will be asked to qualify the risk probability and impact in terms of Low,

Medium, and High. Qualifying risks is a discipline unto itself and the accuracy of your results is commensurate with the

techniques you use and your historical experience with risk analysis.

Before you begin any qualification analysis, you will want to determine your organization’s tolerance to risk. Can the

organization operate in a high-risk environment or are they conservative and want only low-risk projects? If you work for

a small company, an additional project cost of $250,000 or a delay of two 2 months may put your entire company at risk. If

you work for a large organization, these overruns may be acceptable for a project. How much cost and delay is acceptable?

Remember that this isn't your preference; it's just the bottom-line numbers you can tolerate. Determine and write down the

company’s risk tolerance.

Next, you will want to qualify each risk item by asking:

•

What is the impact to the project if the risk item occurs (Low, Medium, High)?

•

What is the probability or likelihood of the risk item occurring (Low, Medium, High)?

Review archived projects to see if similar tasks from the past have taken longer than your estimates or

Form risk_management.doc

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Risk Assessment Workshet And Management Plan Template

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