Managing Project Risks and Changes

Managing project risks and changes is a critical project management skill that can have a huge impact on whether a project meets its objectives. Here are some key points on effectively managing risks and changes:

Identify risks early - Document all major foreseeable risks to cost, schedule or quality. Assess the likelihood and potential impact of each. Review at project meetings.

Mitigation strategies - Develop "if-then" risk mitigation plans to avoid or minimize the impact for high probability or high impact risks. Assign responsibility for the mitigation tasks.

Risk register - Track all project risks in a risk register that outlines the risk, probability, impact, owner, mitigation tactics, and current status. Review and update regularly.

Change management plan - Define a change management process with procedures for submittal, impact analysis, approval steps, implementation and verification.

Evaluate change requests - Assess proposed changes for scope, schedule and resource impacts through input from stakeholders. Approve / reject based on criteria.

Update project plan - For approved changes, update the project schedule, budget, quality plans, staffing to align with change orders. Manage knock-on effects.

Reserve contingencies - Allocate cost, schedule and staff contingencies in the project plan to absorb some changes and known risks. Protect these reserves.

Status reporting - Track risk management status, risk occurrences and changes via regular project status reports. Alert leadership of major concerns.