Reference no: EM13956677

Overview:

Risks fall in a few categories, known and unknown. It is extremely important in any project to effectively plan for both with a contingency budget and resources because some will happen. In this class, you are asked to develop a Risk Management Strategy and Plan that identifies potential risks, ranks them by impact and likeliness, contains mitigation strategies, and includes a way to control and communicate them. You will select a project that you may have developed in a previous class or a known project in your organization to create this strategy and plan for.

Throughout this course, you will be working on developing several components of a final Key Assignment. Additional information and the deliverables for each Individual Project will be provided in the assignment description for this project.

In this first Individual Project, you are asked to develop the outline of the sections that will be included in the "Risk Management Strategy and Plan" document and a draft of a proposal to submit to your instructor. The other information you will include is a high-level description of the project you will be conducting the risk analysis on.

You will also be setting up the final Key Assignment outline that you will add to each week. The combined Individual Project (IP) assignments will be your final Key Assignment deliverable.

Project Selection:

The first step will be to select a project that you to develop a risk management strategy and plan for. This project will be used as the basis for each of the assignments throughout the course and should conform to the following guidelines:
1. Nontrivial: The selected project candidate should reflect a real-life project that has at least the major milestones identified.
2. Domain Knowledge: You will be applying knowledge of this project to address assignments related to identifying and analyzing risks.
Select a project that fits these requirements, and submit your proposal to your instructor before proceeding further with the assignments in the course. Approval should be sought within the first few days of the course. Your instructor will tell you how to submit this proposal and what notification will be given for project approval.

Assignment:

Your first task in this process will be to select a project to use as the basis of your Key Assignment. You will also create the shell document for the final project Key Assignment document deliverable that you will be working on throughout the course. As you proceed through each project phase, you will add content to each section of the final document to gradually complete the final project delivery, which is the Risk Management Strategy and Plan.

The following project deliverables:

1. Submit project proposal to instructor for approval
2. Risk Management Strategy and Plan Document Shell

o Use Microsoft Word
o Title Page

1. Course number and name
2. Project name
3. Student name
4. Date
o Table of Contents
i. Use auto-generated TOC
ii. Separate page
iii. Maximum of three levels deep
iv. Be sure to update the fields of the TOC so it is up-to-date before submitting your project.

Section Headings (create each heading on a new page with TBD as content except for sections listed under "New Content" below)
. Project Outline
i. Risk Management Justification
ii. Project Risks Identification
iii. Project Risks Assessment
iv. Project Risks Responses Strategy
v. Project Risks Management Plan
vi. Project Risks Monitoring & Control Plan
vii. Project Risks WBS & Budget Updates
viii. Project Risks Communications Plan

New Content to be Inserted in Above Shell
o Project Outline
. Brief description of the project.
i. The milestones and/or WBS for the project.
ii. Material can be taken from approved proposal submitted to the instructor, and this will serve as the draft for the proposal.
iii. Be sure this project is approved by the instructor.

Risk Management Justification
. Discuss why risk management is so important to the success of the selected project in a letter to the project sponsor.
i. Describe the steps that will be used to develop the Risk Management Plan.
ii. Represent this process in a flow diagram as well.

1. Project Risks Identification
. Start brainstorming, at a high level, on some categories where risk could occur in this project (Note: you will continue this brainstorming activity in the next week with specifics, likelihood, and impact).

Name the document yourname_MPM344_IP1.doc, and submit the document for grading.

1,000-2,500 words of new content

For this assignment, you will use what you identified as your approach in this week's Discussion Board to identify and assess all of the risks that are associated with your project. You should identify a minimum of 8 risks then assess them by employing the techniques that you selected in the Discussion Board assignment.

For the compilation of your risk assessment component, you may use a table similar to the following:

Note: This is just a sample, and you may choose to represent it in a different format as long as you have all of the pertinent risk-related information, including the following:

· Risk name
· Risk description
· Likelihood (using a scale)
· Impact (use both as a scale and description)

Leave room to append more information later to show your mitigation strategy.
The following is an example of ranking the risks using a 2x2 risk matrix approach:

In this sample 2x2 ranking matrix, the risks that should receive the highest priority are the risks that are in quadrant 1, and the risks that will receive the least attention are in quadrant 4.

Deliverables:
The overall project deliverables are the following:
· Update the Key Assignment Document title page with a new date and project name.
· Update previously completed sections based on instructor feedback.
· Complete the New Content below, and copy it under the sections in Key Assignment Document called "Project Risks Identification" and "Project Risks Assessment":

o New Content

§ Project Risks Identification
§ Use the project risk categories that you brainstormed during the previous week to categorize the risks that you have determined for this assignment.
§ Show a list of stakeholders and project teams that you utilized to identify risks.
§ Thoroughly describe each project risk (at least 8), which includes the source for identifying the risk.
§ Identify and show the specific technique that you used to identify the risks, such as cause and effect, a fishbone diagram, a SWOT analysis, interview notes, and an assumption list.
§ Project Risks Assessment
§ Create a table similar to the sample above, or use another method to list the risk, the likelihood of occurrence, and the overall severity of impact if it occurs.
§ Fill in the table with the information from the project identification utilizing the 2 scales that you determined as a part of your Discussion Board assignment. Be sure to consider both the cost and schedule impact as you determine the overall impact.
§ Rank your risks based on both the likelihood and impact using a technique, such as 2x2 matrix as shown in the assignment description section.

· Be sure to update your table of contents before submission.

· Name the document "yourname_MPM344_IP2.doc."

1,500-2,500 words of new content

For this assignment, you will utilize some of the same decision processes and responses that you gave for the Discussion Board assignment to determine a response for each of the risks that you have already identified in the previous weeks. For the higher priority risks, make sure the responses minimize the risks as much as possible.
You will be adding columns to your table (similar to this example) that you started in Week 2.

Deliverables:

The overall project deliverables are the following:
1. Update the Key Assignment Document title page with a new date and project name.
2. Update previously completed sections based on instructor feedback.
3. Complete "New Content" below, and copy it under the section in the Key Assignment Document that is called "Project Risks Responses Strategy."

o New Content
§ Project Risks Responses Strategy
§ Determine the type of response for each identified risk (avoid, transfer, mitigate, or accept).
§ Thoroughly describe what the specific response will be, including any additional tasks to the project plan or a contingency budget where appropriate.
§ Update the table or matrix that you have been summarizing the risks in to include identification of the response (see example in the assignment section).
4. Be sure to update your table of contents before submission.
5. Name the document "yourname_MPM344_IP3.doc."

2,000-3,500 words of new content

For this assignment, you will determine how you will monitor the risks that you have projected, as well as the unknown risks that occur during the course of the project. You will also formulate a control plan once a risk has been identified during the monitoring process.
As part of the monitoring and control process, you will need to identify who plays what role in this process, also known as the risks responsibility plan. One method is to construct a RASI matrix that is similar to the following example:

Please note that the risk categories and names are very general in this example, and you will have more specific risk categories that are based on Weeks 1 and 2's work.

Deliverables:
The overall project deliverables are the following:
1. Update the Key Assignment Document title page with a new date and project name.
2. Update previously completed sections based on instructor feedback.
3. Complete New Content below and copy it under the sections in the Key Assignment Document that are called "Project Risks Responsibility Plan" and "Project Risks Monitoring and Control Plan."

o New Content
§ Project Risks Responsibility Plan
§ Include a responsibility matrix listing the stakeholders and project team members, with risk actions (or category of actions) along the top.
§ Next, fill in the table using the following letters, and refer to the examples in the Assignments section as "R" if they are responsible for monitoring and controlling the risk, "A" if they are the approver for taking action to respond to the risk, "S" if they have a support role in responding to the risk, and "I" if they only need to be informed. This is also known as a RASI chart.
§ Project Risks Monitoring and Control Plan
§ Include a detailed description of the overall monitoring process, including the techniques that will be used to monitor the existence and impact of individual risks.
§ Include a detailed description of the control process when a risk occurs.
§ Include a diagram flowchart to depict the steps in the control process from risk discovery through risk response.
4. Be sure to update your table of contents before submission.
5. Name the document "yourname_MPM344_IP4.doc."

4,000-8,000 words, including the deliverables from previous weeks.

In previous weeks, you selected a project around which to develop your Risk Management Strategy and Plan Key Assignment. In Week 1, you crafted a letter to the project sponsor explaining the importance of project risk management. You also determined the high-level steps for conducting risk assessment and brainstormed on some of the risk categories. In Week 2, you fully identified the individual project risks and analyzed them by determining their likelihood and impact. In Week 3, you determined the mitigation strategies, which might include prevention, control, or ignoring the risk. In Week 4, you developed a project risks matrix with all of the information that you gathered in Weeks 2 and 3, and you developed a risk monitoring and control approach and plan.

Now you are ready to embark on adding all of the risk management tasks to the overall project plan, as well as producing a well-thought-out communications plan. In the final week, you will also revise the Key Assignment draft document based on feedback from your instructor and peers. Under the last sections, which are not filled in, you will develop a very detailed WBS, contingency budget, and communications plan.

Deliverables:

The overall project deliverables are the following:
1. Update previously completed sections based on instructor feedback.
2. Complete "New Content" below, and copy it under the appropriate sections in Key Assignment Document called "Project Risks WBS and Budget Updates" and "Project Risks Communication Plan."
o New Content
§ Project Risks WBS and Budget Updates
§ Identify the additional tasks that are associated with planning, monitoring, and controlling risks.
§ Put this in a WBS structure so that they can be added to an existing plan.
§ Determine a contingency budget to mitigate the risks that are most likely to occur.
§ Determine additions to the project plan budget to monitor and control risks.
o Project Risks Communications Plan
§ Identify the stakeholders that communications should go to.
§ Determine the frequency of communications.
§ Construct the types of reports and how they will be delivered.
§ Discuss how this might be integrated into the change management process.
§ Define who has the final authority for sign-off to extract from the contingency budget to mitigate risks.
3. Update the Key Assignment title page with a new date and project name.
4. Update previously completed sections based on instructor feedback.
5. Be sure to update your table of contents before submission.
6. Name the document "yourname_MPM344_IP5.doc."
7. Submit the final Key Assignment document for grading.