Assess the Risk and Do It Anyway

Risk management is one of the critical steps for PMs, which should be assessed at the beginning of the project. It may seem hard to estimate the possible risks when we have a new program. We may feel everything is under control; however, if we are an experienced program manager, we would know that certain activities can get challenging. So, not only is it important to have experience, but also, we should have experienced team members and lessons learned from the previous projects.

So, what can we do to manage our project risks? The first step is creating a risk register, where we can log on to the possible risks, and then prioritize them based on their impact and occurrence. In the end, you need to decide on a response plan. If the risk is likely to occur and has a high impact, we need to avoid it by creating an action plan, select an owner, and the due date for the action. We can also mitigate it by creating a response plan. For these options, we need to execute our strategies to cancel or eliminate risks. We may also choose to accept some risks and do nothing or transfer them to a third party.

In my recent job, I observed other PMs and tried to understand their challenges to prevent similar situations for my programs.  For example, when I worked with the products that we shipped to China, I was not aware of their third-party certification process. I noticed that it might cause unpleasant delays. So, I managed to execute some of the activities in different orders to be able to prepare my test parts, and also scheduled testing several months before. Some activities can not be expedited, so if it is possible, we need to take proactive actions. That’s what I call risk management.

In new projects, we will always have uncertainties, and we need to learn how to manage them.Sometimes we learn by making mistakes; sometimes we learn by observing others’ experiences. We can also get help from experienced people, and if not possible, we can find so many useful online tools. However, whatever we do, we need to decide if we want to avoid, mitigate, transfer, or accept the risks in our projects.

Assessing the possible risks is an essential part of program management. And, if we want to be one of the best in our job, managing our risks can help us tremendously.  We will make mistakes along the road and continue to learn from them. However, as Warren Buffett says, ‘ It’s good to learn from your mistakes. It’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes.’