A06 - Identify risks and plan responses

Conduct workshops with key team members to first identify risks, and then to plan responses to them. Store the information in the Follow‑Up Register.

Based on the identified risks and planned responses, you may need to adjust the Project Description and the Deliverables Map as well.

If a similar project has been done before, check its archive to learn more about the risks related to your project.

Follow-Up Register template

Project Description template

Purpose

The main reason for identifying risks is to plan responses to them proactively, because it’s much easier and cheaper to control risks before they materialize rather than after.

Common pitfalls

The following helps you avoid some of the commonest pitfalls in risk management:

• Don’t record general, unclear items as risks.
• Don’t record general, unclear items as risk responses – only design actionable responses that can be implemented and evaluated.
• Don’t record the potential impacts of uncertain events as risks – it’s the uncertain events themselves that we need to evaluate, and those are what we call risks.
• Assign a custodian to be responsible for the follow-up actions of each risk. It’s best to spread this responsibility among many team members rather than just a few of them.

Principles

The following principles play a significant role in this management activity:

• NUP2: Preserve and optimize energy and resources.
• NUP3: Always be proactive.
• NUP4: Remember that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
• NUP5: Don’t do anything without a clear purpose.
• NUP6: Use repeatable elements.