Published by Brad Kuhn on 12 Jun 2007 at 06:41 am
Risk Management Plan Template
A risk management plan contains information on how a project team identifies, analyzes, plans, and monitors/controls potential negative impacts to the project (aka risks).
One point to make – I focus entirely on potential negative impacts (risks) and not on potential positive impacts (opportunities). Many formal project management guidelines (such as the Project Management Institute’s PMBOK) call for opportunity identification/analysis in addition to risk identification/analysis. It’s been my experience that most projects don’t have time for this, and subsequently I have not included it in my template. You can easily fix that if you want.
Template Links
Links to the templates are here:
Carnegie Quality » Blog Archive » Risk Management Template Posted on 12 Jun 2007 at 6:46 am #
[...] I’ve just posted a template for a risk management plan – you can grab it over here. [...]
Grad student on 28 Sep 2009 at 8:54 am #
This document is great, you saved me from a breakdown. Thank you!!!
Lee, Jones on 27 Nov 2009 at 3:10 am #
It is really a good artical and very helpful. Thanks Brad.
Yvonne on 07 Dec 2009 at 8:26 am #
Thank you !
Rich on 01 Mar 2010 at 12:20 pm #
Would love to use your Risk Management Plan with some costmetic changes and some University Specific changes and use this for all projects. I want to give you full credit would you want that displayed on the cover or later on in the Plan?
Thanks
Brad Kuhn on 01 Mar 2010 at 12:33 pm #
No problem – just provide a link back to my site, that’s all I need. Glad you found it useful.
Hafiz Adyan on 23 Oct 2010 at 5:40 am #
G’ Day Brad,
I like to use this for one of my diploma assignment and would like to alter the doc according to the project. Please let me know if it’s okay. I will put the acknoledgement in the assignment.
Cheers,
Hafiz
Brad Kuhn on 29 Oct 2010 at 6:29 am #
Hafiz-
Certainly – feel free to adapt this as you need to.
Cheers!
Chris on 26 Mar 2011 at 3:52 pm #
I keep going back to the templates you posted when speaking with my employees. Thank you for making this a public resource.
Cheers!
Kaye Carney on 06 Jul 2011 at 11:17 am #
Thank you for sharing this information; it is a valuable resource.
Istvan on 08 Dec 2011 at 10:22 am #
Thank you
Susheel on 05 Jan 2012 at 4:51 pm #
Dear Kuhn,
it was very nice risk register that have been developed. I don’t find the concrete reason for why you chose the value range from 0.10 to 0.90 for probability and 0.05 to 0.80 for impact. Can you make me clear please?
Brad Kuhn on 06 Jan 2012 at 8:29 am #
I don’t have an extremely scientific answer for you, other than the fact that in the default matrix scoring I’ve setup for the template, probability has a bigger contribution to the matrix score than impact does. It doesn’t have to be this way – you can adjust these values (don’t forget to examine/update the threshold values as well). The risk register template demonstrates a quantitative ranking system, but the reality is that there aren’t any absolutes – a score of 0.10 for example doesn’t mean anything by itself – it has meaning when compared to other the scores of other risks. The whole idea is to have a system that allows you to rank risks and deal with risks with higher scores before focusing on risks with lower scores.
Thanks for the feedback!