The Four Risk Strategies of Project Management

Project Management Risk

There are a several strategies when determining project risks, which include:

1. Scenario based strategy- This strategy involves using creative brainstorming ideas to come up with positive and negative risks inside the scope of the project. For example potential outcomes like delays and their impacts could be considered.

2. Relative experiences strategy- This second strategy determines risks by relating past projects and experiences and tweaking them to fit the scope of the current project (PMBOK, 2004). For example, past project problems can be compared with the new project in estimating issues. Such comparisons could include budget problems, team member issues, distribution of resources, etc…

3. Objective based scenario- This third strategy is used to determine risks in project management by following the same ideas as the scenario strategy and the relating past experiences strategy (PMBOK, 2004). However instead of creating scenarios or using past experiences, risks are determined using the goals and desired outcomes for the project. This type of strategy works best with finding the positive risks in a project versus the negative risks.

4. Qualitative Analysis- The fourth strategy for risk management ranks risks in a hierarchy of importance. The two components of this risk strategy include; one the measure of the likelihood of the risk occurring and two, the measure of impact of the risk if it occurred. One can rate these variables quantitatively by ranking them on a scale of importance such as 1 to 10. The formula used requires that the first variable be added to the second variable and then divided by the total number of possible points on the scale. The risks can now be ranked by answers from highest to lowest number (PMBOK, 2004).

References

Project Management Institute. (2004) A guide to the project management body of knowledge : (PMBOK guide) Project Management Institute, Inc., Newtown Square, PA : pp. 237, 242, 202.

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