subject: Identify Risks in Project Management [print this page] Identify Risks in Project Management Identify Risks in Project Management
Risk Identification is an ongoing iterative process. Risk can arise any time during the project execution cycle. Even though the project is live, the customer or the project sponsor can inform about the possible project risks to the project manager.
But generally the project team should look for possible risks in Project Management Plan, Project Schedule, cost and scope data.
If the Organization has executed similar projects in the past, project manager can look for old project archives to look for some possible risks.
Sometimes, risks can be identified from industry studies or surveys and that's why Enterprise Environmental factor is also listed as an input.
There are various techniques for Risk Analysis. One of them is documentation reviews and this is a kind of must do technique for risk identification. This is a structured way to go through the different project documents like Project Management Plan, Project Scope Statement etc to look for possible risk. If there are any assumptions listed in these documents that can be a potential risk.
Some Organizations have readymade checklist for Risk Identification. These checklists are generally a kind of questionnaire that helps in Risk Identification.
SWOT Analysis, which stands for Strength Weakness, Opportunities and Threat, is also used to analyze project risks. Usually these analyses are done at Organization level first and later the findings are applied at project level too.
For example, the Organization has a very good technology strength and that can be a strength for the project as well. Similarly, if the Organization infrastructure is not that good, it can be a potential risk for the project as well.
The output of the risk identification process is Risk register, which is the list of identified risk. Some time potential threats are also listed in the risk register and they are monitored to check if they are actually becoming a project risk or not.
