Project Risk Management:

Project Risk Management

Project risk management is a process of identifying prospective risks that may hinder the project from
being successful. The process further entails the analysis and planning risk responses throughout the
project to ensure its successful execution. The objective is to ensure the management of the uncertainties
in a way that it maximises the positive risks (opportunities resulting in a good outcome) and minimises or
avoids negative risks (threat to the project’s objectives).
The source of risk can be external or internal that will have repercussions on the BSMS project. External
risk factor is associated with risks that are out of the project’s control while internal risks are associated
with the risks that are generated in the project for instance financial risk and people risk.

Risk Management Planning

Risk management plan will be developed by the project team to establish certain procedures to approach
the risk, identify risk categories and clarify the responsibilities. The project team will review past
projects, corporate risk management practices and the project documents to develop strategies that will be
documented in the plan for managing risk.
The plan will also incorporate stakeholders’ risk tolerance and will be shared among them. The project
will hold planning meetings early in the project to create the risk management plan and get approval from
the project sponsor. They will continue the meetings throughout the project life cycle (quarterly?) and
keep updating the risk management plan to serve the best interest of the BSMS project.

Risk Identification
The project team will identify potential risks by reviewing the project’s planning documents (WBS), risk
breakdown structure, by understanding the common sources of risk and brainstorming with the relevant
stakeholders to generate ideas and anticipate risk in advance. This will be done early in the project and
will be continued throughout the project to adapt to changes and manage the risk before it affects the
progress of the project.
The identified risks will be included in the risk register and the relative importance of each risk will be
based on their intensity of impact on the project. The project team will conduct recursive meetings to
discuss issues and the likeliness of them to occur and update the Risk Management Plan accordingly.
Identified sources of Risk
People risk

 The subject matter experts might misunderstand the project requirements

 Unaligned goals of the project and the employees
 Disagreement with the vendors
 Stakeholder’s disapproval
  Work delegation problem
 Intradepartmental clashes
 Lack of technical skills

Technology risk

 Software and hardware integration

 Technical equipment and sensor might malfunction
 Inadequate quality of the sensors

Structure/process risk

 Data communication error

 Data compatibility issues with control centre

Financial risk
 Cost of replacing vendors
 Insufficient funds for the project
Risk Register
Id Risk Description Knowledge Root Cause Category Risk owner
No. Area
Risk SME's might misunderstand the Communications Lack of Internal Project Manager
1 project requirements communication
Risk Unaligned goals of the project Scope/ Goal Incongruence and Internal Project Manager
2 and the employees Communications lack of leadership
Risk Disagreement with the vendors Procurement Adversarial relation or Internal & Procurement &
3 contract clauses External Compliance
Manager
Risk Stakeholder’s disapproval Stakeholders Poor stakeholder Internal & Project &
4 engagement External Stakeholder
Manager
Risk Work delegation problem Human Resource Poor definition of Internal HR Manager
5 responsibilities
Risk Intradepartmental clashes Scope/ Goal Incongruence and Internal Scope & Project
6 Communications lack of leadership Manager
Risk Lack of technical skills Human Resource Poor human resource Internal HR Manager
7 management
Risk Software and hardware Integration/ Poor design and Internal & IT Manager
8 integration Quality planning External
Risk Technical equipment and sensors Procurement/ Substandard quality Internal Procurement & IT
9 might malfunction Quality assurance Manager
Risk Inadequate quality of the sensors Quality Substandard quality External Procurement
10 assurance Manager
Risk Data communication error Integration/ Poor design and Internal & IT Manager
11 Quality planning External
Risk Data compatibility issues with Integration/ Poor design and Internal & IT Manager
12 control centre Quality planning External
Risk Cost of replacing vendors Cost Unrealistic cost Internal Procurement
13 estimations Manager
 Risk Insufficient funds for the project Cost Unrealistic cost Internal Project
14 estimations Sponsor/Director

Qualitative Risk Analysis

Qualitative analysis of the risk will scrutinise the identified risks in the risk register to prioritise them
based on the likelihood of their occurrence and the severity of impact on the progress of the project. The
Pond Monitoring and Management system (PMMS) will use the probability/impact matrix to assess the
probability and the impact of a given risk. The project members will then take precautionary measures to
anticipate and eliminate the risks that have a high probability of occurrence and impact on the project.

Quantitative Risk Analysis

Quantitative risk analysis will be done after the qualitative risk analysis to do an in-depth evaluation of
the probabilities of a risk. The PMMS project is a complex project requiring all the components (Software
and hardware) to be seamlessly integrated so that the system can run smoothly. Software is one of the
biggest components of the project therefore, Monte Carlo Analysis will be done to simulate the projects
outputs and analyse the projected problems over a distribution. The data gathering and the distribution of
information will be corroborated by interviewing SME’s to remove any uncertainties in the project.
Risk Monitoring and Control
Controlling and monitoring of risk will be an ongoing part of the PMMS project to implement the risk
management process. The process will entail risks responses and ensuring that the project team members
are aware of any uncertainties that may be presented during the project. The newly identified risks will go
through the same process as the previously identified risks and the resources would be reallocated
accordingly. This will be done by recursive meetings where the project team members will brainstorm
and conduct interviews with the SME’s to be conscious of new risks that may befall the progress of the
project.

Project Plan Execution

Project plan execution is intertwined with project management plans. The subsidiary project
management plans highlighted above will guide the implementation and execution of the project.
Beyond the project planning, a good project manager will also consider change requests,
environmental factors and last but not the least the known unknowns. They need to be flexible
and possess the ability to work around a certain situation that may present themselves during the
execution stage. The project manager’s focus would be leading the project team and managing
relationships with the stakeholders efficiently to execute the project successfully.
There are a few ways to ensure the success of a project by efficient management of the project’s
execution.
 As mentioned above, the planning and execution of the project are inseparable as the
former provides direction to the latter. A well-established project plan is crucial to
produce desirable results and the activities that produce good results should be
documented. The coordination between planning and execution can be improved by a
simple approach of involving people to make the plan that are working on the project.
Therefore, it is imperative for the project manager to have a meeting with the project
team members to solicit inputs regarding specific planning areas and establish a good
project management plan.
 Execution of a project requires strong leadership and a culture that fosters the supportive
environment required for the execution. By creating efficient management plans, the
project manager will set an example for the team members to follow. Furthermore, the
organisations themselves need to create a supportive environment and use project plans to
perform the tasks. This will further improve the relationship between planning and
execution, therefore, making it convenient for the manager and the team to perform
during execution.
 Moreover, specialised tools are required for management of the project which depends on
the project’s nature. In this case, the major portion of the PMMS project entails
programming and system development, therefore, the project manager must have an
expert judgment in order to make good decisions regarding what programming platforms
to be used and what would be a suitable training approach? Furthermore, the project
 manager should set up meetings regularly to build strong relationships with the project
team, to resolve problems and brainstorm for possible opportunities in the project.

Integrated Change Control

Integrated change control is carried out throughout the lifecycle of the project as it entails
identifying change requirements, their evaluation, and managing. Change control requires
managers to make trade-offs between important dimensions of the project, for instance, time and
cost, etc. Furthermore, the project manager needs to have knowledge about the key areas that
will be affected by the change so that they can manage stakeholder communication in a timely
manner.
To integrate change, a change control system will be developed by the project manager to
specify when and how will the official documents be changed. The change control system also
entails a change control board where a group of people owns the responsibility of approving the
change requests or reject them. Moreover, the board will also suggest guidelines to create change
requests, evaluate them and for the management of change implementation. Normally, key
stakeholders of the project are the participates of the change control board while being subject to
change depending on various areas of the project that is under consideration to be altered.
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