Plan Risk Responses

Develops options and actions to address individual and overall project risk, recording owned responses and triggering change requests. Analysis is wasted unless it leads to a plan.

Process Group Planning Knowledge Area Project Risk Management

Plan Risk Responses decides what to do about each significant risk: for threats, avoid, mitigate, transfer, escalate, or accept; for opportunities, exploit, enhance, share, escalate, or accept. Each response is sized to the risk, assigned an owner, and folded back into the plan and budget.

Plan Risk Responses: key inputs and outputs — The key inputs feeding Plan Risk Responses and the deliverables it produces — full ITTOs are listed below.

Contingency and fallback plans handle risks that materialize, while contingency reserves are set for accepted risks. Because responses change scope, schedule, or cost, they generate change requests and updates across the baselines.

Common pitfalls. Generic responses not matched to the specific risk; responses with no owner; ignoring the cost of the response versus the risk it addresses; and planning for threats only while leaving opportunities on the table.

Inputs, Tools & Techniques, and Outputs

Inputs

Project management plan
Project documents
Enterprise environmental factors
Organizational process assets

Tools & Techniques

Expert judgment
Data gathering
Interpersonal and team skills
Strategies for threats
Strategies for opportunities
Contingent response strategies
Strategies for overall project risk
Data analysis
Decision making

Outputs

Change requests
Project management plan updates
Project documents updates