Risk Management: A Practical Guide

As a manager, it can be a challenge to ensure your team's project is finished on time and within budget. Risks such as rising costs, new regulations, and volatile markets can all affect your project's goals. But what exactly is risk? A risk can be described as the combination of the likelihood and consequences of an event occurring. To mitigate or avoid these consequences, your organization needs to have an effective risk management strategy in place.
Risk management enables you to highlight the risks that your project is exposed to. It also allows you to develop a contingency plan to overcome them. Some of its main aims are to secure an organization's cash flow, to protect its reputation and resources, and to ensure projects stay within budget.
Risk management consists of a three-step process. First, you identify the potential risks to your project. Second, you assess the risks in terms of their probability and severity, and prioritize them accordingly. And third, you deal with the biggest risks to your project by creating an effective plan of action.
This course describes how to carry out the first step, identifying risks. You'll learn about the different risk identification techniques involved, such as root cause analysis and documentation reviews, and you'll find out when they should be used. You'll then examine one specific technique, brainstorming, in further detail. You'll learn how to prepare and conduct your session and manage group dynamics. You'll then have an opportunity to practice facilitating a brainstorming session in a simulated situation.
At the end of this course, you should be better able to identify risks to your project. And you should find it easier to overcome some of the challenges of conducting a brainstorming session.

There are four questions you must ask when assessing opportunities for your department or individual project.
The first question is, "What events would increase the probability of the opportunity occurring?" There are many variables you may be able to change with regard to an opportunity's likelihood.
The second question is, "How can we encourage those events to occur?" This involves deciding what actions to take to improve the chances an opportunity will come about.
Once an opportunity presents itself the third question is, "How can we capitalize on an opportunity that occurs?" Make sure you have the right resources in place to get the most benefit from the opportunity.
The fourth and final question is, "How will we know when the opportunity has occurred?" Set out triggers and a timeline to measure the opportunity's progress.

As a manager, you probably have to deal with risks from time to time in your organization. Some risks are negative and may pose a threat to your plans. Others have an upside and offer positive opportunities. Whatever type of risk you encounter, it's important to deal with both threats and opportunities in an effective way.
To help deal with risk effectively, you need to put a risk management - or RM - process in place. The first stage in this process is to identify the risks you're dealing with. Stage two is to assess the risks you've identified. And at stage three you deal with the risks. This course focuses on stage three of the risk management process - dealing with risk.
When dealing with risks, it's important to choose the most efficient and cost-effective response in each case.
This course describes various ways of responding to threats effectively. So, you'll be better equipped to manage threats when they do occur.
The course also outlines various responses you could consider when you encounter an opportunity. This should help you to seize opportunities and make the most of them.
In addition, the course describes the importance of contingency planning. This involves planning responses in case risk events actually occur. It also involves assigning reserves so that the responses can be implemented when necessary.