9 Reasons You Should Include Risk Management to Your Project Plan

by Sam Makad

Using effective risk management strategies lets you know the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that may arise in your project.  When you plan out for unexpected events, you will be well equipped the moment that they arrive.  To make sure that your project is successful, you need to handle prospective risks. Doing so will make it easier to know, mitigate, and avoid these problems when they arise.  What is Risk Management? Before we start, let's first define what risk management is.  Risk management is planning, identifying, analyzing, implementing, and monitoring the risk of your project.  The main goal of project risk management is to decrease the negative impact of your project. Be it in your finances and resources, your team's morale, and business' reputation.  Risk management also ensures that your project will be successful. This includes generating sales and revenue or providing customer satisfaction.  In this post, we will be discussing the eight reasons you should include a risk management plan in your project:  Table of Contents

1. Risks occur throughout the project

2. It maximizes profit and meets deadlines

3. It eliminates unprecedented risks

4. It lets you focus on critical areas

5. It allows you to be proactive

6. It gives you helpful project data

7. Success is the expected outcome

8. It ensures customer satisfaction

9. You can expect better bottomline

1. Risks occur throughout the project To effectively identify threats, you need to start from the beginning and throughout your project.  There are a lot of risks that are identified to be "known risks" while there will be others that will need additional research on your part.  To know these risks better, you can create a risk identification checklist that is quite specific to your project type. You can interview industry experts and stakeholders for this one. You can also build a risk repository. Furthermore, you can divide these risks into categories, such as organizational or technical. Then try breaking it down into subcategories such as interfaces, technology, performance, logistics, budget, and so on.  2. It maximizes profit and meets deadlines When you set a risk management plan for your company, you will likely increase your chances of success. That's because you can reduce adverse risks as you finish projects on time.  Doing so allows you to meet your budget, as well as your target objectives.  On the other hand, if you do not have a risk management plan in place, you are easily exposed to problems, and as a result, you become vulnerable.  Having effective risk management strategies allows you to maximize your profits. Also, you can reduce expenses on activities that do not provide a return on investment.  With a detailed analysis, the most effective leaders can prioritize ongoing work based on results, despite the odds.  3. It eliminates unprecedented risks By adopting risk management in your project plan, there will be fewer surprises on your part, later on.  Meanwhile, a more robust approach in managing these risks fosters collaboration in your team. This includes communicating about project challenges in a more timely manner.  Applying risk management practices allows members of your team to spot concerns earlier.  Being aware of the potential issues that may arise means that the right people can step in to mitigate the problem before it becomes too severe for anyone to do anything about it.  Effectively managing risks before they happen is a much more streamlined and cost-effective way to run your business in the long run.  4. It lets you focus on critical areas Applying right risk management strategies allows you to spot essential regions of your ongoing projects. This enables you to address any issues should they come up, and before a problem escalates. When dealing with a lot of projects, you can quickly pinpoint areas that are not going according to plan. Thus, you can take appropriate measures to correct it. Risk management practices should be applied to your existing project management practice.  5. It allows you to be proactive A risk management plan will enable you to become proactive when it comes to taking the necessary steps and mitigating any adverse risks should they arise.  It will be easier for your team to identify these risks and come up with actionable steps that will hopefully decrease its likelihood. If ever a risky event takes place, you can quickly whip out a contingency plan.  6. It gives you helpful project data It also allows you to access better and high-quality data, allowing you to have better decisions as you stay grounded on your project.  Moreover, having real-time access to risk information via a project management dashboard has many benefits. This includes basing your decisions on the latest data that you have instead of an outdated report.  7. Success is the expected outcome Knowing that you are actively managing risks already sets the expectation for project success. With already a framework in place, you can efficiently deliver despite the known risks.  You are also more open about these challenges to project managers, and everyone will be working on that expected outcome.  This also changes the entire mindset of the team. Knowing that they are working on something greater propels them to deliver positive results for the company. It also boosts their morale and creates an environment where you can achieve success.  8. It ensures customer satisfaction Having a risk management plan improves the efficiency of your operations. Thus, you can keep your customers happy and satisfied.  Happy customers will always refer you to their network and guarantee your business' growth.  You do not just end up with happy customers, but with an engaged team whose interest is to satisfy their customers and come up with a better quality product. 9. You can expect better bottomline Employing good risk management practices saves you from expensive recalls and lawsuits. It also allows you to save on costs and improve your revenues.  Final Thoughts There are a lot of benefits to having a good risk management plan in place. To effectively anticipate these risks early on allows you to reap more benefits in the long run.  Effectively managing these risks helps streamline your business' operations for optimal performance. Apart from that, it also means that you are not irrational when making vital business decisions should these risks happen.  Being able to expect and plan for these risks ahead of time sets the foundation is establishing a successful risk management program. Sam Makad Sam Makad is a business consultant. He helps small & medium enterprises to grow their businesses and overall ROI. You can follow Sam on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin.