Stages of project risk management

Risk Management increasingly becomes a key factor and plays an essential role in project management. Risks may directly affect elements of the project (budget, costs, scope, timeframes, human resources, etc.), and thereby in some way have an influence upon the project succeeding. Risk is determined as an event that may impact to the final outcomes or to the final objectives of the project in some way. If the project scope is considerable, then company follows formal risk management processes in order to detect the risks at an early stage. Once the risks are detected, the company measures them so that the risks could be carefully monitored basing on the weight (the measure of a risk) assigned per risk. Thereby some of the risks will be avoided or transferred to the appropriate party for further mitigation.

In many cases risk management process starts at the initiation phase of the project and continues right until the project is formally closed. In this context risk management process is a crucial component of project management for large and small projects and it has essential impact on events, plans and schedules throughout the project lifecycle. The process of risk management includes four major stages which are risk identification, risk prioritization, risk monitoring and risk closure.

1. Risk identification

Risks can be identified by expert judgment over some of the project management activities, or by analyzing time, cost and quality plans. Once risks are identified, they are to be recorded in risk register. Risk register (also called as risk log) is a tool widely applied for identifying, analyzing and managing risks. It comprises all the information on identified and collected project risks which the team identifies when assessing and setting the activity durations for risks.

2. Risk prioritization
On the risk prioritization stage of risk management process, experts divide risks into the following groups: critical, major and minor. To each group they assign a weight to each of the risks. The weight per risk is defined basically primarily based by two factors:

• Probability of event occurrence
• Impact if the event does occur

3. Risk monitoring

This stage is performed by the project management in order to keep a check at the risks that have already been identified. On this stage every risk is closely monitored, avoided, or mitigated.

4. Rick closure

After expert assessment, careful analysis, and appropriate action steps are done at the end of the project, the risks are to be closed.

In VIP Task Manager you can view all tasks dates (due date, start and finish dates, estimated and actual time, custom time fields) of the project in Task List view or Task Tree view. The perfect usability, online notification system, sharable tasks and permission control capabilities allows the project management to prevent risk occurrence or to reduce their impact to the project. Built-in Calendar with user-friendly interface and easy drop-and-drag feature enables to make project planning and scheduling. The project management can get daily, weekly or monthly view of the schedule and it will help track and monitor risks.