11.1 Plan Risk Management
Decide, up front, how you will find, size, and respond to risk.
Planning / Risk · ← PMBOK reference · See it on the map
Why it matters
Without an agreed approach, one person's minor concern and another's serious threat get treated the same way, and the genuine threat can slip through.
What done looks like
A risk management approach is written down, including how risks will be scored.
First time tip
Agree on the scoring scale before anyone logs a risk. Comparing risks scored on two different scales tells you nothing useful.
What you need (Inputs)
- Project Charter
- Project Management Plan
- Stakeholder Register
- Enterprise Environmental Factors
- Organizational Process Assets
How you do it (Tools & Techniques)
What you get (Outputs)
Worked example
A volunteer committee is running a one-day outdoor music festival in a town park. Before anyone lists a single worry, the committee agrees how this will work: risks go in a shared register, each gets a likelihood and an impact rated low, medium or high against a scale written down in advance, and anything high on both goes to the chair for a decision rather than to whoever spotted it.
Common pitfalls
- Letting each member score against a private sense of "serious", so two risks both rated high mean quite different things.
- Writing the approach after the first risks are already logged, then having to rescore all of them.
- Making the approach so heavy that volunteers stop logging risks at all.
How driftless helps
- Stakeholder Analysis can be run here.
- Meetings can be run here.
- Risk Management Plan can be created in the wizard.