How to Manage Risks and Plans in PMP | iCert Global

If you sit down with any project manager and ask them what they believe is most critical in managing a project, you will receive many different responses. Some will tell you that creating a solid plan is most critical, while others will tell you that setting and achieving deadlines is most critical. Most experienced leaders would strongly point out the importance of keeping within budget. No business wants to make it half way through a project but have already spent more money than was originally anticipated. However, in all the discussion of solid schedules, budgets, and project work, even experienced project managers forget one very critical aspect of project management – planning for risks.

What is managing risk and project risk?

Project risk means any unforeseen occurrence that affects some aspect of the project, including its resources, activities, individuals, finances, or timing. Risk management in PMP refers to the activities you undertake to handle possible risks in a project. There are good risks and bad risks. Good risks result in good aspects for your project, whereas bad risks result in problems. You need to attempt to utilize good risks and minimize the effects of bad risks on your project objectives as a project manager.

Steps in Risk Management

The extent to which you would prioritize risk management would depend on the scale of your project and how much time you have available. For big projects, you would spend a great deal of time developing plans to reduce risks, but for small projects, at least make a list of each risk in order of priority. This way, even if you don't have sophisticated plans, you will be aware of all the risks that your project would face.

If you are a project manager, you have the responsibility to make sure that the negative risks will not affect the project's success. The risk management process steps in PMP are:

• Finding risks
• Risk studies
• Risk planning to control risks
• Putting risk plans into action
• Observation and risk management

Finding Risks

The first step in planning a risk management plan is to determine what kind of risks can occur. You can do this by making a list of all those problems that can affect your project.

Evaluating Risks

Now that you have your list of risks, you need to review them. You need to know two things: how severe the risk is and how probable it is. Then you categorize each risk as 'low', 'medium', or 'high'. For instance, if something will create some issues but will occur all the time, that is a high risk. If something could create issues but won't ever occur, that is a low risk.

There are two schools of thought regarding risks:

• Qualitative risk analysis: It is easy and no math is needed. It is based on opinions and feelings, so it won't be as accurate.
• Quantitative risk analysis: This is more complex and time-consuming. It's models, numbers, and testing. This gives more precise answers and allows you to plan better.

Planning Risk Responses

Once you are sure of what risks you have are the greatest issues that must be dealt with first, the second thing to do is to determine how to manage them. 

1. Reducing Risk: Attempt to reduce the possibility that the risk will happen. You can do this by altering how things are done or by introducing new rules to help avoid the risk.

2. Mitigating Impact: If it is not possible to avoid the risk from occurring, attempt to reduce the damage or issues caused by the risk.

3. Risk Transfer: In certain cases, you can transfer the responsibility for risk management to others. This entails that someone else or another group will manage the risk.

4. Accepting Risk: If you cannot reduce, restrict, or shift the risk, then you will be forced to accept it. You will have to prepare for what could be and understand how it could impact your project.

Executing Risk Responses

Then you begin implementing your risk plan. There are certain risks from time to time that you never anticipated—these require special contingency plans known as reserves. Every reaction to a risk should have somebody in charge. That is, if you have five risks to manage, allocate five members of staff and each one should be in charge of one risk.

Observing and Controlling Risk

The final task is to review how well your risk plans are. You have to review quickly but carefully so that the risk is dealt with appropriately. Always be aware of the status of each risk and note what occurred before and after you dealt with it. That way, if at some point in the future someone asks, you can simply tell them why the risk plan was necessary and the benefits it brought.

How to obtain PMP certification? 

We are an Education Technology company providing certification training courses to accelerate careers of working professionals worldwide. We impart training through instructor-led classroom workshops, instructor-led live virtual training sessions, and self-paced e-learning courses.

We have successfully conducted training sessions in 108 countries across the globe and enabled thousands of working professionals to enhance the scope of their careers.

Our enterprise training portfolio includes in-demand and globally recognized certification training courses in Project Management, Quality Management, Business Analysis, IT Service Management, Agile and Scrum, Cyber Security, Data Science, and Emerging Technologies. Download our Enterprise Training Catalog from https://www.icertglobal.com/corporate-training-for-enterprises.php and https://www.icertglobal.com/index.php

Popular Courses include:

• Project Management: PMP, CAPM ,PMI RMP

• Quality Management: Six Sigma Black Belt ,Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Lean Management, Minitab,CMMI

• Business Analysis: CBAP, CCBA, ECBA

• Agile Training: PMI-ACP , CSM , CSPO

• Scrum Training: CSM

• DevOps

• Program Management: PgMP

• Cloud Technology: Exin Cloud Computing

• Citrix Client Adminisration: Citrix Cloud Administration

The 10 top-paying certifications to target in 2025 are:

• Certified Information Systems Security Professional® (CISSP)

• AWS Certified Solutions Architect

• Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect 

• Big Data Certification

• Data Science Certification

• Certified In Risk And Information Systems Control (CRISC)

• Certified Information Security Manager(CISM)

• Project Management Professional (PMP)® Certification

• Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)

• Certified Scrum Master (CSM)

Conclusion

Risk management is involved in every project. Project managers can maintain projects on schedule by identifying possible issues sooner and mapping out how to address them. With the use of discovery, research, planning, and tracking risks, projects are successfully finished. Studying risk management and implementing it will make you a more effective project manager and more capable of handling issues.

Contact Us For More Information:

Visit : www.icertglobal.com     Email : info@icertglobal.com