Risks can have an adverse impact on the success of your project. Here are five tips to help you successfully navigate project risk management:
- Identify risks early and often. Start when you are handed the project charter, continue during planning, and be sure to re-visit your risk log periodically. If there were notable issues during the project, be sure these become a part of the lessons learned for future avoidance.
- Risk management is a team sport. Don't identify risks one at a time. Gather the team and stakeholders for a reasonably timed workshop to identify, analyze, and strategize on handling risks.
- Communicate effectively about risk. Focus on the top ones and don't over or underplay them. Open and transparent communications about risk will help everyone get more comfortable with the topic.
- Don't ignore difficult to quantify risks. Be sure that all are qualitatively analyzed and use the information to understand the level of importance you need to associate with the risk. Then see what you might be able to do to find existing data or collect new data to quantify them.
- Remember that risks can have positive impacts (opportunities) and that going through the exercise of risk management will better prepare the team when previously unidentified threats appear.
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