Ask any Project Manager if they think Risk Management is an important part of successful project management and they’ll all say yes. Ask them if they actually use Risk Management consistently throughout the entire project lifecycle and you’ll probably see far fewer hands go up.

In my own personal experience, I have found that there is almost nothing that eases the path of a project as much as a consistent and disciplined approach to Risk Management. There are two very simple reasons why a consistent approach to capturing, evaluating and managing risk is so critical to managing projects.

Reason 1: Stuff goes wrong.

Reason 2: People worry about stuff going wrong.

Stuff Goes Wrong

The Risk Inspector in Merlin 2

No matter how great you are at managing projects, there are always going to be things that crop up that you never saw coming. Since it is impossible to prepare for the things you don’t expect, your best option is to prepare for the things you do expect. Once you’ve identified and evaluated the things you know might go wrong, you can make decisions on what to do about them. In some cases, you just accept the risk and in others, you develop plans for how to deal with it. When you take the latter approach, it helps to also identify the outcome you expect from your actions so you can monitor how effective your risk response is. When all this is done, you’ll see three benefits. The first is that when things do go wrong, people won’t panic because they’ll know there is a plan. The second is that while they are not panicking, they’ll be following the response plan that was defined to cope with the risk and since they have a defined expected outcome, they’ll be able to track the response performance. The third benefit is that while folks are not panicking and working the response, you’ll have time to deal with that other “opportunity” that cropped up out of nowhere and took you by surprise.

People Worry

Stakeholders are busy people with a lot on their minds. They normally do not have time to keep up with every little detail and often times, it will be these little details that wake them up at night and set them to worrying. The worrying typically arises because of the stress they feel over their perception of chaos that comes from them not knowing if, or how something is being addressed. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that the issue is not being handled, it does mean the Stakeholder has a concern and fear over the uncertainty of the status of that concern. Whether the thing they are worried about is a big deal or not is irrelevant. As the PM, you need to provide the Stakeholder with a way to have this worry addressed. One great way to remedy this is by holding weekly risk management meetings at the same time, in the same place, just for the Stakeholders. My typical approach to these meetings is to invite all the Stakeholders and ask them to bring a list of all the things they are concerned about. These risks are captured and evaluated. Response plans are developed for the risks that require them, and an expected response outcome is defined. These risks are captured in a Risk Register and reviewed each week with the meeting attendees. Doing this consistently results in the Stakeholders feeling like they have a place to bring their worry. By documenting it, monitoring it and reporting back on it each week, you can demonstrate to them that you have now taken ownership of this risk and they can let it go. This reduces Stakeholder stress, and reinforces the level of trust that develops between the PM and the Stakeholder. Because the Stakeholder is less locked in on the thing they were worried about, they are now better enabled to make objective decisions based on a more holistic view of the project and this reduces risk even further.

Risks in the Merlin 2 Element Register

Summary

Risk Management is a critical component of successful project management. If you aren’t currently practicing it on a consistent basis throughout the project lifecycle it is definitely worth trying out. If nothing else, leading an effort to identify and plan for all the threats to your project will demonstrate to team members and stakeholders alike that you are on the case and working towards increasing the project’s chances of successful delivery.