Risk Management in Projects: Inputs, Tools, Techniques, and Outputs

This essay delves into the critical aspects of project risk management, defining it as a comprehensive process involving planning, identification, analysis, response planning, and control of project risks. The primary objective is to minimize the adverse impacts of uncertainties on project completion. The essay highlights the significance of inputs such as the project management plan, charter, stakeholder register, and organizational factors, which are crucial for risk analysis. It further discusses the tools and techniques, including expert judgment, meetings, and analytical methods, used to assess and mitigate risks. The essay emphasizes the importance of a well-developed risk management plan as a key output, outlining its role in structuring project management activities and determining the effectiveness of risk management strategies. Ultimately, the essay underscores that the success of a project hinges on a robust risk management plan, requiring the strategic application of appropriate inputs, tools, and techniques to reduce the negative consequences of project uncertainties. The references include various books and journals related to project management and risk management.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT
(Essay)

Project risk management can be defined as a process of managing different types of risks
which are associated with the project. These are risk management, determination, analysis,
response planning as well as monitoring and control (Kubasek, Brennan and Browne, 2016).
Major objective of this process is to reduce negative impacts of different uncertainties on project
completion. Kutsch and et.al, 2015 has concluded that “risk management plan comprises of
inputs, tools as well as techniques and outputs” (Kutsch and et.al, 2015).
As per this statement, project manager needs to apply suitable inputs and methods for
getting appropriate outputs or reducing impact of distinct uncertainties of project. Risk
management inputs include different attributes which play an important role for analyzing all
risks and their impacts on the complete project and its objectives. Major inputs of risk
management plan are project management plan, project charter, stakeholder register, enterprise
environmental factor and organization procedures and assets, etc. (PMBOK, 2013). In which,
project charter is a document which will include information about project purpose and
justification, project objectives and success criteria, high level requirements, constraints and
assumptions for completing project. It will also describe high level risks and schedule and
stakeholders list of the project. Stakeholder register helps in identifying stakeholders which can
influence project findings and help in getting required information about the project. This input
includes information about internal and external stakeholders of the project and their needs and
requirements also. Another input is enterprises environmental factors. As per this, project can be
easily influenced by number of factors such as culture, governance and CSR policies of
organization (Archibald and Archibald, 2016). Available resources and allocation, industry
standards, market conditions, political, economic and social climate, etc. Including risk
management inputs includes organizational process assets which comprises processes and
procedures for completing project work and corporate knowledge base. Including this, project
manager needs to focus on other inputs also such as types of the risk, risk statement formats,
roles and responsibilities, etc. Consequently, risks management inputs project all information
associated with the project which can influence risks management plan in positive and negative
manner (Kubasek, Brennan and Browne, 2016). So, inputs are so, important elements for
managing risks in a project so, project manager needs to focus on all these inputs in effective
manner. All these elements help in analyzing risk in an effective manner by which project
manager can take appropriate actions to resolve the specific problem.
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Further, there are number of tools and techniques which can be used by the manager to
manage risks of project (Lagerström, Baldwin and MacCormack, 2015). These are expert’s
judgment, meetings and analytical techniques. Stakeholder risk profile analysis and strategic risk
scoring sheets are included in the analytical techniques which can be used by project manager for
determining, analyzing and mitigating risks of the project. These techniques play important role
in getting appropriate action to resolve project issues in effective manner. In contrast, expert
judgment focuses on taking advice or guideline from the senior management, project
stakeholder, subject matter experts and professionals of specific field, etc. Therefore, this
technique will help in getting better solution to manage risk or reduce t level of impact. Meetings
is also one of the important technique which can be conducted by project manager for
determining project progress and chances of risk occurrence (Calvo-Mora, Navarro-García and
Periañez-Cristobal, 2015). These tools and techniques also help in analyzing risks such as impact
of these risks of project, preference and priorities of the risk, etc. Therefore, these techniques
play important role in developing high level risk management plan for associated risks. Using
these tools and techniques project manager should allocate appropriate resources to different
teams for managing different types of risks by using suitable method.
Output is also one of the major aspect of the risk management plan and a well-developed
plan is considered as a major outcome of this project which described structure and performance
of project management activities (Sadgrove, 2016). Along with this, output of the risk
management plan will focus on methodology, roles and responsibilities, budgeting, timing and
category of risk and risk probability and impact, etc. All these outcomes provide assistance in
determining that whether project manager has managed associated risks in an effective manner
or not. Overall, it can be said that success of the project totally depends upon risk management
plan (Stettina and Hörz, 2015).
Overall, for managing risks project manager needs to use appropriate inputs, tools and
techniques and outputs because these will help in reducing negative impacts of uncertainties in
effective manner.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Archibald, R. D. and Archibald, S., 2016. Leading and Managing Innovation: What Every
Executive Team Must Know about Project, Program, and Portfolio Management (Vol.
22). CRC Press.
Calvo-Mora, A., Navarro-García, A. and Periañez-Cristobal, R., 2015. Project to improve
knowledge management and key business results through the EFQM excellence
model. International Journal of Project Management. 33(8). pp.1638-1651.
Kubasek, N. K., Brennan, B. A. and Browne, M. N., 2016. The legal environment of business: A
critical thinking approach. Pearson.
Kutsch, E. and et.al., 2015. The Contribution of the Project Management Office: A Balanced
Scorecard Perspective. Information Systems Management. 32(2). pp.105-118.
Lagerström, R., Baldwin, C. and MacCormack, A., 2015. Visualizing and measuring software
portfolio architecture: A power utility case. The Journal of Modern Project
Management. 3(2).
PMBOK, 2013. Project Management Institute, Inc.
Sadgrove, K., 2016. The complete guide to business risk management. Routledge.
Stettina, C. J. and Hörz, J., 2015. Agile portfolio management: An empirical perspective on the
practice in use. International Journal of Project Management. 33(1). pp.140-152.
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