Risk management - Project Life Cycle
Project Life Cycle
It is easy to confuse the management of the ‘risk assessment process’ with that of the project itself.
This section deals mainly with comments on the project management and some points relating to the risk management process and how it fits in.
Detail on the risk management process itself is covered elsewhere [see The Risk Management Process].
It is quite common to represent the lifetime of a project as in the diagram above.
RISK does not exist in any one phase of the Project Life Cycle but throughout.
The exact timing of when we begin the Risk Management Process will govern the sort of difficulties we will have in doing it well.
In fact, this may not just be part of the Project Management [see ‘The Complete Project Management package’] and [see 'The Complete Project Management plus PRINCE2'] process but could include carrying out a risk assessment of the Project Management process itself.
Obviously, carrying out the Risk Management Process earlier in the Project Life Cycle will have benefits when resource has yet to be committed.
The timing of the risk management process is discussed in more detail elsewhere [see The Risk Management Process].
Within each of the parts (PHASES) below we would be considering the 6 questions referred to above.
Who?
Why?
What?
How?
Resource?
When?
For certain parts (project phases) each question will have more meaning.
Typically, it consists of 4 major sections which can be broken down into other key parts of the project.
The main sections and their constituent parts are:
CONCEPT
Idea
PLAN
Design
Plan
Allocate
EXECUTE
Carry out the plan
TERMINATION
Deliver
Review
Support
These are discussed further in the next sections.