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Another brainstorming technique you can use to identify risks is to hand out sticky

notes and ask the risk team to answer one question: what could go wrong?

By letting people freely think and blurt out all the possibilities that occur to them,
you may get some input that proves to be valuable in the risk identification
process.

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT)

Another technique you can use to identify risks is called SWOT analysis. This involves
analyzing the project from each of these perspectives: strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities, and threats. It also requires examining other elements such as the

project management processes, resources, the organization, and so on.
Strengths and weaknesses are generally related to issues that are internal to the

organization. Strengths examine what your organization does well and what your
customers, or the stakeholders, view as your strengths. Weaknesses are areas the
organization could improve upon. Typically, negative risks are associated with the
organization’s weaknesses and positive risks are associated with its strengths.

Opportunities and threats are usually external to the organization. For example, the
weather, political climates in other countries where you may be performing parts of the

project, the financial markets, and so on are external to the project and could present
either opportunities or threats. SWOT analysis can be used in combination with
brainstorming techniques to help discover and document potential risks.

Risk Analysis

Risk analysis is the process of identifying those risks that have the greatest possibility
of occurring and the greatest impact to the project if they do occur. Before you begin

the analysis process, it’s important to understand your stakeholders’ risk tolerance
levels. This may be partially based on the type of industry you work in, corporate
culture, departmental culture, or individual preferences of stakeholders. For example,
research and development industries tend to have a high risk tolerance, while the
banking industry leans toward a very low risk tolerance. Make certain you understand
the risk tolerances of your stakeholders before assigning probability and impacts to the

risk events.

You’ll want to prioritize and quantify the risks in a way that is easy to understand and
that highlights at a glance those risks that will need a risk response plan should they
occur. One of the easiest ways to do this is by creating a probability and impact
matrix. Now that the risk list is complete, the next step involves identifying the
probability of the risk occurring and the impact.

Risk Probability Probability is the likelihood that a risk event will occur. For
example, if you a flip a coin, there’s a .50 probability the coin will come up heads.

Probability is expressed as a number from 0.0 to 1.0, with 1.0 being an absolute

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