Section Summary – Updates to Risk Register after Quantitative Analysis

In this section we covered all the updates that happen to the Risk Register after we complete the Quantitative Analysis process. Let us quickly summarize what we have learnt in this section before moving on to the next topic… 

• There are four updates that happen to the Risk Register after we complete Quantitative Analysis. They are: 

o Probabilistic Analysis of the Project
o Probability of meeting Project cost and time objectives
o Prioritized list of quantified risks 
o Trends in quantitative risk analysis results 

• The focus or purpose of “Probabilistic Analysis of the Project” is to identify the probabilities relating to the whole project. 
• How probable are we to achieve our project schedule? Or How probable are we to complete the project within budget? Are some questions that get answered at the end of quantitative analysis.  
• The probabilities are typically displayed as a Probability distribution
• Risks in the Risk Register are ordered based on either of the following: 

o Risks that pose the greatest threat or Opportunities to the Project 
o Risks that are most likely to impact the Project’s Critical Path
o Risks that require the largest contingency reserves

• Trends emerge whenever we perform an activity multiple times over the project’s lifecycle
• These trends can be used to create better and more efficient risk responses 

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Introduction – Updates to Risk Register – After Quantitative Analysis

We have covered the Quantitative Risk Analysis topic in great detail in the previous section. As with any other activity in Risk Management, the output of this activity too would result in updates to the “Risk Register”.

To recap, the Risk Register is going to contain the most up-to-date information regarding all of the risks that have been identified for our Project. As we progress through each stage in Risk Management, we update the Risk Register so that it remains as the one comprehensive document that contains all the details we need in order to perform our Risk Management Activities.

So far, we have done the following – In Order:
1. Identified Risks
2. Updated the Risk Register with the preliminary risk information identified in step 1
3. Performed Qualitative Risk Analysis
4. Updated the Risk Register with the output of the analysis performed in step 3
5. Performed Quantitative Risk Analysis
6. WE ARE HERE NOW!!!

Common Sense would tell us that the next logic step here would be “Do Updates to the Risk Register with output of the Analysis performed in step 5” and this is exactly what we are going to do now.

Remember that, we did not perform quantitative analysis on all the risks we identified. Instead, we selected a sub-set of high priority (probability/impact) risks and have analyzed them further. So, as a result of this step, the updates to the risk register would affect only those risks that we selected…

Quantitative Risk Analysis typically results in the following updates to the Risk Register:



In the following chapters, we will be covering those updates one by one…

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Next: Probabilistic Analysis of the Project