How can you use risk identification techniques to avoid project delays?

1 What is risk identification?

Risk identification is the process of finding, analyzing, and documenting the potential threats and uncertainties that could affect your project's objectives, assumptions, constraints, and dependencies. Risk identification helps you to anticipate and prepare for possible problems, rather than reacting to them after they occur. Risk identification is an ongoing activity that should be done throughout the project life cycle, from initiation to closure.

2 Why is risk identification important?

Risk identification is important because it helps you to reduce the likelihood and impact of negative events, and increase the chances and benefits of positive events. By identifying risks early, you can plan and implement appropriate responses, such as avoiding, transferring, mitigating, or accepting them. Risk identification also helps you to communicate and collaborate with your stakeholders, team members, and clients, and to align their expectations and priorities with your project's goals and constraints.

3 How to use risk identification techniques?

There are many risk identification techniques you can utilize to discover and document the risks that could affect your project. Brainstorming is a creative and collaborative technique that involves generating and recording ideas about potential risks without judging them. You can use session with your team, stakeholders, experts, or other sources of information, and employ tools like mind maps, flip charts, or sticky notes to organize and categorize the ideas. Checklists are predefined lists of common or historical risks that could apply to your project or similar projects. Interviews are structured conversations involving asking questions and collecting information from key people who have relevant knowledge, experience, or insight about the project and its risks. SWOT analysis is a strategic technique that involves identifying and analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that could affect your project's performance and outcome. This approach helps assess internal and external factors that could help or hinder the project's success, as well as identify positive and negative risks that could arise from them.

4 How to document and prioritize risks?

After you identify the risks that could affect your project, you need to document and prioritize them. Documenting risks involves describing their characteristics, such as their name, description, category, source, cause, effect, probability, impact, and response strategy. You can use tools such as risk registers, risk matrices, or risk reports to record and track the risks and their status. Prioritizing risks involves ranking them according to their importance and urgency, based on their probability and impact. You can use tools such as risk scoring, risk mapping, or risk ranking to evaluate and compare the risks and their potential consequences.

5 How to monitor and control risks?

Monitoring and controlling risks involves reviewing and updating the risks and their responses throughout the project, and taking action to ensure that they are managed effectively. Monitoring risks involves measuring and reporting the changes in the risk probability, impact, and status, and identifying any new or emerging risks. You can use tools such as risk audits, risk reviews, or risk indicators to monitor and communicate the risk performance and progress. Controlling risks involves implementing and evaluating the risk responses, and adjusting them as needed to address the changes in the risk situation. You can use tools such as risk triggers, risk contingency plans, or risk escalation to control and mitigate the risks and their impacts.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?