Articles

Reassessing Risks Throughout the Project

Risks can change over time. As your project progresses there is a greater understanding of risks, which is why risks should be reassessed. 

PMI Picks offers the following insights for all project managers to consider: 

Few things can derail a project faster than a risk. It’s why project managers and teams spend so much time and effort identifying, assessing, prioritizing and managing risks. But have you noticed that a lot of that work is front-loaded? Once risks are analyzed, that analysis tends to stick.  

New risks may be identified, and some risks will drop off as they are no longer relevant, but there isn’t much reassessment of those ongoing risks.  

That’s a mistake, because risks don’t often remain stable — they change and evolve with the project and with shifting circumstances. So, sometimes a risk needs to not only be reprioritized, it needs to be reassessed to see if the potential impact, chance of occurring, contingency and management approach are still appropriate. If they’re not, they should be changed. 

Project managers should consider several different factors to decide whether to reassess risk, including: 

• Does the original analysis of impact, chance of occurring and management approach align with what is now known about the risk and project?
• Are the current management activities having any impact?
• Does the planned contingency still seem to be appropriate?
• How does the team member assigned to own the risk feel that things are progressing?
• What do other experts on the areas impacted by the risk think of the current assessment?
• How does the project manager and team feel about the risk — are they confident or concerned?

Key Takeaways 

• Risk reassessments are an important step in reviewing and reconsidering a risk.
• Risks can change over time, and as the project progresses there is a greater understanding of risks.
• Whenever a risk isn’t responding to management, a reassessment should be considered.
• Risk reassessments should also trigger a review of the original assessment to see if there are lessons to be learned.

This week, PMI curated the Strategic Risk Management pack for you. It is a six-pack of bite-sized, PMI-approved content that details how risk is more than a project-level consideration. In fact, strategic risk management at the enterprise level is essential to optimize performance.  

What you will learn: In this pack, we explore the concept of business risk and look at several critical strategic risk areas, including capacity and capability, distribution and scheduling and  risk tolerance. We also explain how these terms impact project managers and their work. Each article takes from three to four minutes to read. 

Note: You must be a PMI member to view these articles so you will be directed to login first.