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Indy Risk School
The Risk Assessment Process
The process of risk assessment involves a participative process where the project manager, team members and key project stakeholders complete a Project Risk Questionnaire and through a series of open discussions achieve an overall Risk Assessment for the project.
What is important is the discussion undertaken during the risk assessment process between team members and stakeholders. It is a powerful process for bringing into the open assumptions and different views on the project.
In our experience, it is unlikely that a team will agree on the risk ranking of all factors. Depending on previous experience, different team members will see the project differently. If after discussion, there is still no agreement, then a voting technique where the majority wins is the best approach. If the votes are tied, then Rob's Rule for Risk Assessment should be applied:
When planning projects, it pays to be paranoid and the worst case is used for the risk assessment.
Ideally within each organization, there should be a standard Project Risk Assessment Questionnaire for each class of project e.g. in-house software, package, communications, operations. However, if there is no standard risk model for your organization, it is reasonably simple to develop one by gathering your most experienced project managers for a brain-storming session. All factors that have caused their projects to get into trouble are listed, discussed, ranked and scored by level of impact. The resultant questionnaire can be then compared to the various factors discussed by Jones, Boehm and others for confirmation of impact.
A simple project risk questionnaire is on our Web Site
At the conclusion of the Risk Assessment process, there will be an assessment of the risk level associated with the product, the target environment, the team and the overall project.
| Product | Low Risk |
| Envrionmet | Medium Risk |
| Team | High Risk |
| Overall Project | Medium Risk |
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In addition, the team will have identified a number of High risk factors that place the project at risk. It is here that the second process of risk management - Risk Reduction (or Containment) - is undertaken.