Whether you’re a jack-of-all-trades startup founder or an experienced team lead, risk management is a crucial skill to master and integrate into any project from its inception.
The risk might not materialize; some risk factors never do. Still, it’s far better to have a plan and redundancies in place than suffer consequences that can affect your human resources, reputation, and bottom line.
Putting together a risk management plan is straightforward – let our in-depth guide lead you at every step!
1. Identification
Every sound risk management strategy begins with risk identification. In this context, risks are all the likely events and actions that could jeopardize the project. It’s important to distinguish risks from uncertainties.
A project risk may negatively impact the project in a tangible, quantifiable way and may have happened before. Uncertainties are vague, more universal, and unpredictable, so spending too much time on them may dilute your plan.
The more sources you consult, the more detailed the picture you’ll obtain. It’s always a good idea to reach out to more experienced professionals who have likely encountered risks you aren’t even aware of.
On the other hand, keeping up with industry news will help you anticipate new and developing challenges. Stakeholders and colleagues should have a say as well since they provide unique perspectives.
2. Analysis & Prioritization
Once you’re aware of all potential risks, you can examine each in more detail. Some risks are more probable than others. Likewise, severity might vary from a mild inconvenience to crises that can put the project on hold or jeopardize it.
Analysis lets you categorize and prioritize risks, informing subsequent steps in your management efforts. Risks with high probability and impact severity take top priority while tackling others, and it will depend on your judgment.
For example, the project might require additional permits or measures to ensure regulatory compliance. The likelihood of this may be low, but you’ll want to budget for it anyway since the impact could be substantial.
At this point, it’s beneficial to designate team members responsible for specific risks. Delegating this task will distribute the workload more evenly while letting individuals focus on refining fewer mitigation strategies and monitoring.
3. Developing Mitigation Strategies
A thorough analysis identifies which risks to focus on and lets you create mitigation strategies accordingly. As the name implies, these strategies are actions and processes designed to reduce the chances of risks becoming live issues and minimize their impact if and when they do.
While there’s a place for reactive mitigation, proactive and preemptive strategies are usually more successful.
Effective mitigation leads toward one of several desirable outcomes. Naturally, it’s best to avoid a risk altogether. For instance, people on your marketing team might work remotely. This introduces the risk of unsafely accessing sensitive company resources and man-in-the-middle attacks.
Using a VPN removes this risk factor through encryption and greater anonymity. VPN providers price their products reasonably, and often, well-known names like NordVPN offer coupons and other promotions, so even small-scale businesses and startups can integrate them without unbalancing their budgets.
Risk acceptance is another possibility. Let’s say you’re about to launch a new product and are planning to revamp your website. If the deadline is already set, it’s better to pay for unexpected overtime or hire outside help to meet it than have your reputation take a hit due to delays.
With some risks, the most you can do is try to control the outcome. Phishing emails continue to be a top cybersecurity threat. Opening a single malicious link could infect critical endpoints and delay project completion.
You can’t be 100% sure colleagues won’t fall for a phishing scam. Inform yourself and your team about the steps on what to do if you ever open a phishing email. Raise awareness and organize training sessions to reduce this risk significantly at a fraction of the cost.
Lastly, there’s the option of transferring some of the risk to third parties. Insurance is a universal example, but you can also outsource delicate tasks or enter into partnerships.
4. And Contingency Plans
Hopefully, the mitigation strategies you create will be enough to prevent the most damaging risks. Since that’s not always the case, contingency planning is a core part of risk management.
Unlike incident response plans — designed to address active developments and cover a broader range of uncertainties — contingency plans focus on alternative solutions you can implement before an identified risk factor becomes an issue.
Employee illness and turnover are common risk factors and straightforward to plan for. Ensuring multiple people are familiar with specific processes and can fill in for colleagues on short notice helps maintain a steady pace.
5. Monitoring
All that’s left now is to monitor the project as it unfolds. Assigning multiple people to this task during the analysis stage will improve responsiveness and ensure thoroughness. Keep colleagues and stakeholders appraised, reassess risks as needed, and document any new risks or issues to help with future identification.
Conclusion
Risk is a fundamental part of any worthwhile endeavor. Now that you have the tools & understanding needed to form an adequate response, you can meet risk head-on!
