Risk identification

Risk identification - basic methods

Methods

Documentation review

• Collect, review and understand the content of the relevant documents
• Set focus on scope, cost, time and quality.
• Identify assumptions and constraints, and review them.
• Review the quality of documentation based on completeness and consistency

Information gathering

• Brainstorming: Goal is to create a list of risks with the involvement of the project team, experts and stakeholders.
• Delphi technique: Experts participate anonymously in a questionnaire, the responses are summarized and results recalculated and the expert facilitator provides comments. Helps reduce bias in the data and prevents participants influencing each other.
• Interviews: experts, stakeholders, experienced project managers

Checklist and risk catalogues

• Risk identification checklists based on prior project’s data
• The lowest level of the risk breakdown structure can be used as a framework for te checklist
• It is impossible to build an exhaustive checklist

Assumption analysis

• Studies the validity of the assumptions present in the project.
• All assumptions should be explored and reviewed.
• Changes and new assumptions should be recorded
• Focus should be placed on assumptions that impact project objectives

Diagramming techniques

• Cause and effect diagrams (fish-bone diagram): aids finding causes of the risks.

(more: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_03.htm)

• Root-cause analysis: reorganizing the identified risks by root causes can help unveil more risks.
• System or process flow charts: shows how elements in the project interrelate.
• Influence diagrams: represents causal influences among project variables, timing and the relationship among project variables and outcomes