Risk Management Plan Mistakes and Your Projects
Risk management plan mistakes are failing projects every day—and not because project managers aren’t building them.
The real issue?
They’re built on five silent mistakes that most teams don’t even know they’re making.
I’ve seen these missteps
- Destroy timelines
- Erode trust
- Sabotage stakeholder confidence
Even on well-resourced, expertly led projects.
If you want to lead projects that deliver real results, these are the five mistakes you must eliminate today.
1. Treating Risk Management as a One-Time Activity
If your risk register is collecting digital dust after kickoff, you’re already in trouble. A common, yet simple risk management plan mistake, project managers and risk managers need to address this up front in their projects.
Risk isn’t static—it evolves daily. And treating risk management like a checkbox exercise is one of the fastest ways to derail a project.
Keep the risk register updated throughout the project. It will help you, your team, and your project!
Strategy Tip: Bake risk reviews into your weekly meetings. Set up calendar nudges, team rituals, or dashboard reminders. A living risk register leads to living project decisions.
If you’re not doing this, you’re not managing risk—you’re managing hope.
2. Writing “Incomplete” Risk Statements
Do you see the next risk management plan mistakes in risk statements that sound just like:
- “Vendor delays.”
- “Budget overruns.”
- “Schedule issues.”
Sound familiar?
These vague entries lead to vague responses—and vague responses lead to real-world consequences.
It is on us as project and risk management professionals to guide our teams towards building more detailed and impactful risk statements!
Bad
Vendor Delays
Good
Due to potential delays in the delivery of goods from third-party vendors, there is a risk to the project schedule and overall timeline, resulting in missed milestones, increased cots, and potential impacts on stakeholder satisfaction.
Fix It Fast: Add names, dates, dollar amounts, and triggers. If someone on your team can’t read a risk and understand exactly what’s at stake, it’s not a usable entry.
3. Not Defining Triggers or Thresholds
No trigger? No timely response. This risk management plan mistake is as simple as that.
If you haven’t identified when a risk requires action, your team will always respond late. And in risk management, late often equals additional time, cost, and maybe even scope changes.
Everything you don’t want to happen as a project manager!
Pro Move: Add a “Trigger” column to your risk register. Whether it’s a metric (e.g., supplier lead time exceeds 3 weeks) or an event (e.g., stakeholder exits the org), triggers help your team shift from reactive to proactive.
4. Ignoring Positive Risks (Opportunities)
Risks aren’t just threats. They’re uncertainties—and some of those uncertainties could lead to breakthroughs.
A topic I love to talk about is avoiding this risk management mistakes in only seeing the threats against your projects by giving focus to finding the opportunities that could impact your project too!
Faster delivery. Cost savings. Unexpected wins.
Pro Tip: Ask your team to identify one opportunity for every threat during your next risk workshop. A balanced risk approach helps you capitalize, not just protect.
5. No Risk Owner Assigned
“If everyone owns it, no one does.”
This is one of the biggest risk management mistakes I come across.
A risk without an owner is a risk that’s invisible when it matters most.
And risk ownership that always lands on the project manager should never be the default decision!
Action Step: Assign ownership and make it visible. This doesn’t mean doing everything yourself—it means assigning clear responsibility for monitoring, escalating, and executing the response.
Your Next Step: Download the Template
If any of these risk management plan mistakes hit a little too close to home, good. That’s the first step toward better project outcomes.
I’ve put together a free Risk Management Plan Template that shows you exactly how to structure your risks, assign owners, and track real-world triggers.
Avoid making any of our 5 risk management mistakes for your project! Start with our template and build out a comprehensive risk management plan today!
The Risk Blog is a subset of Forty-Four Risk PM, LLC.
