Risk Identification Tips for New Project Managers

Risk identification is one of the key factors on which the success of projects is dependent. If risks are identified in time, then steps can be taken to manage these risks and project success can be assured. Of course, we can avoid risks from occurring at the first place but still there are some chances of its occurrence. If the potential risks cannot be identified properly, then there are great chances of project failure in terms of time and budget.

If you are new to project management, then you might be confused about risk identification and how it is properly done. Do not worry in that case, I’ll be providing a complete sample of risk identification to make your work easy.

Project Risk Identification

Risk management is a vast process that includes lots of modules like project risk planning, identification, risk analysis, and controlling. The main goal of risk management is that the negative events can be identified and controlled before it can harm your project.

Project risk identification is the key module of risk management process. The main objective of risk identification is to identify the risks that can harm the project and note down their characteristics. It is a combination of lots of techniques and a lengthy process. However, we should not waste a lot of time on risk identification. After the potential risks are identified, we should analyze it quantitatively and qualitatively to point out more impactful risks.

Risk Identification Tools

Following is a list of some tools that can be employed to identify potential risks:

• Documentation reviews
• Information gathering techniques
• Checklist analysis
• Assumption analysis
• SWOT analysis
• Diagramming techniques, etc.

There are a number of more tools available for risk identification as well.

Risk Categories

The risk identification can be done by dividing the project into different categories and then identifying the risks at each level. Following is the list of categories:

• Schedule risks
• Requirement risk
• Project management risk
• Technology risk
• Customer risk
• Human resources & contractors risk

Schedule Risks

Scheduling involves the following types of risks:

1. Sometimes some tasks are missed from the schedule that can be devastating for the project later on.
2. If one task is delayed due to some reason we can fall back in time due to the dependence of other tasks on that one.

Requirement Risks

Risks involved in requirement category are:

1. Requirements usually continue to change.
2. Poorly defined requirements can be harmful for the project.
3. Partially known requirements at the start of the project.

Project Management Risk

Following risks are involved in project management:

1. Little authority of manager in the organization can affect the project decision making and planning phases.
2. Change of priorities may affect the entire project.
3. The criteria of success is often not defines clearly creating confusion in mind.
4. Different modules needed same resources at the same time increasing time.

Technology Risks

Technology risks involved in projects are:

1. Wrong development of user interfaces.
2. Wrong selection of technology for the project.
3. Under development technology dependence.

Customer Risks

Customer risks involved are:

1. Changing customer requirements.
2. Slower customer reviews on prototypes.
3. High customer expectations in terms of speed.

Human Resources and Contractor Risks

The risks are:

1. One developer performing critical development tasks.
2. Longer hiring process.
3. Contractors leave before project completion.
4. Poor communication between team members due to conflicts.
5. Longer training requirements of personnel.