Risk Management Plan (Essay Sample)

Risk Management Plan
RISK MANAGEMENT PLAN
Software Application Development
Construction Company
Street Address
City, State Zip Code
Date
Risk Management Plan
Introduction
The quality performance of most organizations new projects and services development depends on a good risk management plan. As organizations begin new projects, uncertainty is bound, which necessitates the need to develop new products and services. Thus, the decisions of creating a new product or service lead to the involvement of some risks. The organization then comes up with a framework where the project team identifies the risks involved, develops strategies to mitigate the risks. A construction company needs to develop a software application to support its design, budgets, and labor of various contractors required a risk management plan for the new product. Before starting risk management, the construction company had to complete certain preliminary project elements such as the methodical process identified, ranked and scored the various risks.
Also, before developing the risk management plan, the construction company had to establish a foundation providing structured project information by completing and defining various elements. For instance, the company defined the work scope, resources needed, cost elements, and the schedule for the project(Cogliano et al.,2015). The company did the latter by defining the project work breakdown structure, developing a master detailed schedule, estimating the costs of the project and finalizing the budget needed for the project, identifying the resources required for the project and the ones available for the project, and establishing a performance measurement metrics required for the project(Cogliano et al.,2015). Also, the company defined the minimum and maximum baseline thresholds by capturing the project's schedule and the resources and costs required for the project.
The construction company then developed a clear definition of the baseline reporting requirements by coming up with a format of the project, a distribution frequency and a distribution list for the risk management plan for the project. Besides, the organization defined the roles and responsibilities required for the risk management plan execution (Sadgrove, 2016). The company thus assigned various roles and responsibilities to certain leaders of the project risk management plan. For instance, the project manager, the overall coordinator of the Risk Management Plan, has several roles and responsibilities (Cogliano et al.,2015). For instance, chairing the risk assessment meetings by maintaining the projects plan, database and distributing updates, proving training to the project team, and tracking efforts to reduce high-risk levels to acceptable levels.
The construction company then defined the responsibilities of the project team. For instance, the project team reviewed and recommended some risk assessments changes to the created and the proposed risk mitigation plans. The project team takes responsibility for making reports of new risks to the project manager, accomplishing the mitigation tasks assigned, and reporting the mitigation actions status. Also, the members of the project team record and manage time in meetings (Sadgrove, 2016). The construction company defined the responsibilities of key stakeholders and sponsors of the project who participate in meetings conducting a risk assessment. From the resource and budget estimations of the construction company regarding the product development, the Software application project turned out to be a medium risk project with an overall risk score of 24 from a 0 to 100 score. The company's risk management team then comes up with the top three risks associated with the risk management plan.
Top Three Risks
In any new product development, risks are bound to occur, which necessitates developing a risk management plan for the product development. Identifying the risks was meant to inform the project management team about the top risks that would affect the project and their nature (Cogliano et al.,2015). The project team came up with the top three risks that could affect the project's design, including; the delay in server equipment, incompletion of fiber optic connection, and instaffing of the Network Operations Center (NOC). The risks identified could affect the scheduling, running and effective execution of the software application development.
Delay in-service equipment
The management was made aware of the possible unavailability of servers for large scale application testing due to backlog in manufacture's production. The latter, thus, could lead to delaying schedule of the project. Mitigation of the risk is then done by the project manager by going for alternative servers from the backup center.
Incompletion of Fiber Optics Connection
The delays in construction in the installation of the fiber optic cable made it impossible for users to access a high-speed internet connection between their sight and the data center, causing a low response from the application, thus making it unusable. By developing a site-to-site broadband Ethernet radio network injected between the two sites the project manager sorted the issue.
Inappropriate staffing of the Network Operations Center (NOC)
The NOC lacked the appropriate staff for monitoring the bandwidth linked with the software project due to delays in lead times connected to the additional staff hiring as well as training. The issue led to delays in the project schedule. The project manager mitigated the issue by partnering with the NOC to develop an alternative work schedule for staff compensation until the completion of the hiring and training process.
Risk Management Approach
Having identified the top risks that could affect the project, the project management team managed the risks. The team employed a methodical process previously identified, ranked and scored by the project team (Sadgrove, 2016). The project team then added the most likely as well as the highest impact risks, including; the delay in server equipment, incompletion of fiber optic connection, and instaffing of the Network Operations Center(NOC) to the project schedule to make sure that the managers assigned have the appropriate measures to develop the come up with response at the right time at the course of the schedule.
Additionally, during the bi-weekly project team meetings, risk managers provided the recent updates concerning the assigned risks. When the project was complete, the project manager analyzed each risk and its management process (Cogliano et al.,2015). Based on the analysis, identifying the improvements to be included in the risk management process is done by the project manager for similar projects in the future.
Risk Identification
During the initial meeting of project risk assessment, the project team conducted the identification of risk. The project team will employ the Crawford slip method for identifying the risks, recording them, and the staging forum (Cogliano et al.,2015). The method was effective s it minimizes the amount of time, training and equipment. The method also helps in generating a variety of solutions and also makes people feel and get involved. The project team employed the Crawford slip method for identification methods such as expert interviews. The project team conducted two interviews that brought out various risks mitigated by changing the project plan (Sadgrove, 2016). An inclusion of the remaining risks was done by the product team. A meeting of the risk assessment was another identification method where a meeting was conducted with significant team members as well as stakeholders. Some of the risks identified got added to the Risk Register. Also, a similar projects historical review was done. The team had a review of the history of similar projects to ascertain the risks and strategies of mitigatigating the risks.
Risk Qualification and Prioritization
The project manager assigns a probability as well as an impact factor to each risk to determine the seriousness of the risks previously identified by the team. The project manager came up with a probability range of the occurrence of the risk with expressions like; very likely, probably, may occur, unlikely and very likely for the Probability of risk occurrence. Also, the project manager came up with the risk impact by laying down the severity of risk impact, for instance, the critical, serious, minor, and moderate risk impacts (Cogliano et al.,2015). The process made it easy for the project manager to rate the risks basing on the impact they may cause on the project. By the use of a probability–impact matrix, the project manager lead the team in placing each risk to the chart. The Probability –impact matrix was based on two risk components: the occurrence probability and the impact on the objectives. The project team assumes the Probability to be P and the impact to be I. The project team then drew a P/I matrix on a flip board. The project team then assessed the risk score by multiplying the two axes of the matrix. Whereby, Risk = Impact x Probability. Using their best judgement, the team put the post-it notes created upon the matrix (Cogliano et al.,2015). The higher the combined ratings, the higher the score, and thus making it the risk level. The project team then used the result of the matrices to prioritize the risks, identify risks for quantitative assessments, guide resource allocations, and plan the risk response.
After prioritizing all the risks, the project manager then populates the risk register. The risk register refers to a s...