My risk management passion goes back to my experience as a Logistics Officer in the US Marine Corps. Although no one called me a risk manager, as a Logistics Officer, we did quite a lot of risk management. A quote we used to laugh about was:
“I’m a Logistics Officer, I solve problems that you don’t know you have before they ever happen.”
In addition to this humble skill of the logisticians, we were also a thankless job. Generally, no one cared about all the planning, work, and coordination we did. That was, until someone didn’t get what they wanted when they wanted it. It was at those moments everyone would be in our office space, letting us know how we messed up.
Our job was to ensure that transportation, supply, maintenance, general engineers, and services occurred day in and day out. As long as there were no problems, we are in the shadows.
When done right, the risk manager’s role is also a thankless role throughout the project. Their focus is on the risk data. They ensure the identified risks are responded to effectively and appropriately.
Even though logisticians in the military and risk managers on a project are thankless while they work vigorously behind the scenes, they hold an extremely important role. Alexander the Great said about his logisticians:
Today, risk managers might not be slayed, but they could also be why a project fails when they lack proper project risk management skills and techniques.
Just as logisticians ensured that Alexander’s campaigns did not fail, a Risk Manager role is just as important, as they are responsible for finding ways to ensure a project does not fail!
The Role of a Risk Manager
The risk managers role is to manage the risk management process.. The risk manager ensures that the project team and risk owners follow the risk management plan throughout the project’s execution.
This is a tedious responsibility but crucial for assessing and managing a project’s risks. This also sets the tone between the project manager and project risk managers relationship on the project.
Risk managers also want to manage and assess the organization’s risk appetite for the project. This will vary from organization to organization and stakeholder to stakeholder – so the risk manager needs to understand this and plan accordingly for the project’s risk management strategies.
Overall, we want risk managers to integrate risk management into the project planning LIfecycle – ensuring a clear picture of the risk management framework – ensuring a clear picture of the risk management framework needed to accomplish the objective across the project team.
The Role of a Risk Manager Integrated into Project Planning
Adam Josephs and Brad Rubenstein have an amazing book, “Risk Up Front: Managing Projects in a Complex World,”. This book emphasizes the importance of incorporating risk management into project initiation and planning.
They stress the need to conduct risk assessments early in planning, which we should all do within our projects.
Over time, the cost of change increases. Therefore, catching your risks early ensures a lower cost in executing a risk response.
Risk management professionals’ role in project planning is to find and response to risks earlier in the project. Doing so, reduces exposure and the cost impacts on the project.
Identifying risks early allows project managers and sponsors to understand the impacts and analyze the information against the company’s risk appetite.
Conducting this analysis early in the project planning gives companies an option. They can either cancel the project or provide the funding to cover the risk exposure of the project early.
How you integrate risk management into project planning is another battle.
Risk managers and project management teams in organizations can conduct risk analysis for their projects in several ways. For this article, we will focus on techniques best suited for a project’s initiation and planning phases.
Some great ways to do this planning are through:
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Lessons Learned Analysis
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Interviewing
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Brainstorming
Lessons Learned Analysis
Lessons learned is one of the first techniques and practices I have always used in my planning – especially for analyzing risks. Looking back on similar projects to understand their struggles and successes only helps with how we must go with our projects.
Using the lessons learned can help risk managers identify known and unknown risks. It can also turn an unknown unknown risk into a known unknown risk. It is the risk manager’s job to identify, document, and develop a response for these risks. So why not get a head start and develop initial thoughts on those who have learned from their risks in the past?
Interviewing
Like lessons learned, the risk managers role is to talk to those who have done anything similar in the past that you have today. This is a great technique for when your company does not have documented lessons learned, but you have the person who did the project still in the organization.
Interviews are also a great way to catch yourself up on information on processes and procedures when you are new to an organization. Being new, you come with a range of knowledge and capabilities, but there is almost always a learning curve in your new role. So, to avoid becoming the risk for the project you are the risk manager for, interview someone on their experiences with any nuances for navigating the company’s risk management program.
Brainstorming
A good brainstorming session is a great way to identify as many potential risks as possible in a short period.
Pull your team together and explain the rules of your brainstorming session. My favorite rules are:
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We will use the Pomodoro method, slightly modified
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For this, I like to use 2x 15/5 (15 min working/5 min break) and a 1x 10/10 (10 min working/10 min break) minute planning session (1 hour)
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No risk is a dumb idea – if it is plausible, measurable, and applicable – let’s use it
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Put the risk on a sticky note and put it in the corresponding column. Columns are:
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Scope
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Time
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Costs
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Combined (meets two or more of the above)
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After the one-hour session, you and the team review the risks, find similar ones to combine, and enter all the necessary details into the risk register. If appropriate, jump into the qualitative and quantitative analysis to build your risk register.
The Risk Managers Role with Communication and Collaboration
As a risk manager, you should always be involved in, if not a reviewer of, the project’s Communications Plan. Risk managers depend highly on effective and continuous communication, so risk managers need to understand how communication is proposed throughout the project—and it should be monitored throughout the project.
Communication should also automatically be in the risk register since any miscommunication or lack of communication will harm the project outcomes.
Risk management professionals communicate with the project manager, project team, and stakeholders. The risk manager should communicate regularly with the project manager to ensure they understand which risks are most likely to occur and which have the greatest impact on the project.
If you haven’t caught on already, the project risk managers and project managers must constantly communicate. A risk manager can end up working for multiple project managers, so it is a joint effort between the project manager and risk manager to set up time, preferably daily, to review project risks and issues.
This communication and collaboration should also be extended to all project stakeholders. If risks are aligned to a stakeholder’s area, that stakeholder should be pulled into the planning, if not made the risk owner for that particular risk.
Risk managers are critical focal points for communication and collaboration between risk managers, project managers, project teams, and stakeholders. Lack of communication and/or collaboration is an automatic issue for any project. Therefore, a good risk manager will minimize risk by creating lines of communication across the team.
Monitor and Control
Throughout a project, risk managers are used to consistently execute the risk management plan. During monitoring and controlling, the risk manager focuses on implementing risk response plans and reassessing risks.
Implementing Risk Response Plans
When building a risk register, one of the areas that a risk manager should track is the risk owner. The risk owner is responsible for identifying the risk trigger and implementing the risk response plan.
Risk managers need to coordinate with the risk owners throughout the project, ensuring they are aware of the risk status if it is still an active risk and assessing the environment for the risk trigger that would result in a risk being realized.
The ability of the risk manager to work with the risk owners makes the entire risk management framework flow and succeed.
Regular Monitoring and Reassessment
The project risk manager will also need to regularly monitor and reassess risks throughout the lifecycle of the project.
While working with the risk owner, the evaluation of current risks is assessed for applicability. If valid, it stays on the risk register and can be continuously evaluated – if no longer valid, it is closed and taken off the risk register.
The risk manager might not always be doing all this work, but it is his or her responsibility to ensure the risks are monitored and reassessed throughout the project’s lifecycle. This also includes the final closure of all risks at the end of a project.
Review
Yes, it may sound like an administrative process, but all risks must be closed at the project closure. This allows for the risk information, whether they are realized or not, to be included in the lesson learned for fellow project managers to use in future projects.
Risk managers are critical to project execution but are also the key to ensuring monitoring and control of project risks and follow-on reporting. Companies rely on project risk managers to ensure the risk management framework is employed properly, lowering the chance of a project failing due to unforeseen risks.
Just as a logistics officer may not be the reason a campaign for Alexander the Great succeeds, they are why it fails. Risk managers are not the reason a project will succeed, but they can be why it fails. Therefore, the role of a risk manager is to ensure the risk management framework is properly employed throughout the project lifecycle.
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