Out-of-Control Risks

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Risk Management  

A risk can be a good thing or a bad thing on a project. A risk is any unknown event, and the project manager needs to be ready to deal with any risk—whether it is a positive event that needs to be maximized or a negative event that needs to be mitigated. There are times though when a risk gets completely out of control, no matter how much the project manager tries to reign it in or deal with it. Dealing with these out-of-control risks takes a different skill set than managing normal risks during a project.

Risk Identification
The risk begins in identification. At that point, it may not be possible to determine if it will become an out-of-control risk, but the project manager should approach any high-impact or high-probability risk with the foreknowledge that it could get out of control. Spending some time and energy identifying the risks—and determining what the impact will be—might give you just the edge you need to handle that risk down the road if it goes out of control. Risk identification is the process and the time that you have to start working on the risk before it becomes a problem on the project. Risk identification is the first step in keeping a risk from getting out of control, as knowledge is half the battle.

Foreknowledge
In the risk identification step, you learned what risks could be faced by the project. It is time to use that …

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