The monitor and control risks process is instrumental in the success or failure of a project. You may have come up with elaborate and comprehensive plans to handle risks in your project but, if you do not monitor your risks and take controlling actions as required, all your planning effort isn’t worth even one penny. So, every good project manager has to ensure that he/she spends adequate time and effort in this process to reap the best rewards for the project.
There are a total of 6 tools and techniques that we will be using in this process. They are:
• Risk Reassessment
• Risk Audits
• Variance and Trend Analysis
• Technical Performance Measurement
• Reserve Analysis
• Status Meetings
There will be no need to reassess or audit risks if the actual project execution hasn’t started. So, as of now the project status is the same as what we had at the end of the Planning phase and hence none of the risks or their statuses would’ve changed. In fact, the other processes too may not add much value to the Project’s Risk Management if we haven’t entered the Project Execution Phase. All of these processes analyze the risk related data that is available with us now. So, unless we actually start executing project work, the data is not going to be any different to warrant any analysis.
Variance and Trend Analysis uses Earned Value. Remember Earned Value? Though Earned Value isn’t an actual topic as part of the PMI RMP syllabus, it would be a good idea to revisit the following two chapters to refresh your memory:
a. Cost Management during Monitoring & Controlling the Project
b. Measuring Project Performance
The last and final point we will cover as part of this introductory chapter on the tools and techniques used in Monitoring and Controlling risks process is about “Workarounds”. Almost all junior PM’s and even some senior ones easily confuse workarounds with contingency or fallback plans. Remember that workarounds happen during the monitor and control phase of the project while contingency or fallback plans are created during the planning phase itself.
Armed with all the information above, we are now ready to dive into these tools and techniques in detail. Note here that, in the following chapters we will be covering Workarounds as well as some Estimation techniques and Cost Benefit Analysis. Though these aren’t explicit tools and techniques in this process, they are part of the exam syllabus and will be useful in real life too.
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