Risk Handling Introduction

Risk Handling is deciding what to do about each of the risks assessed as important to your project and documenting the planned response. Some risks may be considered potentially so damaging that the project chooses to avoid them completely, or they may seek to transfer the risk to another party more capable of accommodating the risk. Note that insurance should NOT be considered a transfer, because insurance only addresses the financial element of risk, not the underlying causes: insurance is an avoidance tactic. Some risks may be accepted with no further actions (low risks), but other risks may be accepted simply because there is no credible alternative (could be laws of physics or simply the practicality of budgets, personnel, or time). This second class of accepted risks will require that contingency actions be developed in case they occur.  Many risk handling choices - generally, the default option - seek to mitigate the probability of the risk event or the scope of the consequence to an acceptable level. There will be situations that do not involve simple choices between clearly perceived alternatives. Some situations will involve a whole series of interrelated issues that have to be faced and no one option is a clear choice. In such cases, an effective approach is to re-examine the risk and break it down to constituent parts, because there is probably too much scope covered under a single risk.

• Risk Handling Approaches

• Mitigate
• Avoid
• Assume
• Transfer

Risk Handling is the process that identifies, evaluates, selects, and implements options in order to set risk at acceptable levels given program constraints and objectives. The following areas break the process of risk handling into small bits of information ranging from basic handling knowledge to risk handling job aids such as templates and examples.