Risk Management Essay Sample

Risk management is a crucial element of project management, as it allows planners to identify potential pitfalls in achieving project objectives and to plan mitigation actions accordingly. In assessing the risk factors, planning is the secret to avoiding complications that can result from incidence of unforeseen circumstances.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

When planning for a project, one of the most important areas that are easilty overlooked is risk assessment. This critical process allows planners to brainstorm on the likely events that might cause them not to be able to achieve their set goals. The unforeseen, unfavourable events could potentially have serious effects on the ability of the whole group to attain objectives set for fulfillment, and in a business environment, might bring about losses, (Yali, 2008).

Risk assessment is the insurance that projects take to failure, as they are able to put in place mitigational effeorts that prevent harm done to the project otherwise. A hierachical breakdown of risks in the order of their seriosuness is conducted, with options for mitigational actions being given, (Denton, 1997). Another advantage of breaking down the risks by order of seriosness is that it allows the planners to think about those particular risks, which increases the awareness of it and further boosts their ability to respond to them.

Assesing risks to-be are a visionary, fail-safe measure that raises awareness of the possible risks and seeks to solve them before they actually happen. For example, when planning for company team-building trips, getting knowledge of the predicted weather patterns reduces the risk of encountering bad weather that might disrupt activities and cause the project objectives –cooperation, strategy refreshment, teambuilding- to not be achieved. As-is risk assessment, on the other hand, is a reactionary and most often crisis-fueled way of dealing with risks associated with a project. The fact that the risks are being dealt with as a reality that is probably stalling or slowing down the achievement of objectives points to failures in planning, and it also leaves little chance for mitigation to avoid loss. In most cases, as-is assessment looks for ways to prevent further losses due to unforeseen circumstances.

References

Denton H.G. (1997). Multidisciplinary teambased projectwork: planning facto.Design Studies, Vol. 18, Issue 2, pp.155-170

Yali Z. (2008) Teamwork Pattern of Project Risk Management Based on Knowledge Reuse, International Conference on Information Management, Innovation Management and Industrial Engineering, 2008. ICIII '08. DOI: 10.1109/ICIII.2008.49