seven tools and techniques will be used in this process starting with the most popular one the expert judgment and the experts who you should consider in this process should have the knowledge in previous similar projects when it comes to risk management and qualitative risk analysis the second technique is the data Gathering techniques and specifically we will be using the interviews either structured or semi-structured interviews can be used to assess the probability and impact of individual project risks as well as other factors so the interviewer should promote an environment of trust and confidentiality in the interview setting in order to encourage the participant for honest and unbiased assessments so you will conduct interviews with key stakeholders in order to determine and assess the probability and the impact of key individual project risks data analysis techniques will be used starting with the risk data quality assessment as one of the key critical success factors of this process is the high quality information we will be using in the analysis you need to perform this assessment it evaluates the degree to which the data about individual project risks is accurate and reliable as a basis for qualitative risk analysis the use of low quality risk data may lead to a qualitative risk analysis that is of little use to the project now if data quality is unacceptable it may be necessary to gather better data again to use the data Gathering techniques as part of the risk identification process risk data quality may be assessed via a questionnaire measuring the Project's stakeholder perceptions of various characteristics which may include completeness objectivity relevancy and timeline minus a weighted average of selected data quality characteristics can be generated to give an overall quality score so it's important to use the risk data quality assessment technique in order to assess the quality of the information before you start qualitative risk analysis here is an example of the data quality assessment chart two risks the first one is that the raw material may arrive late causing a two weeks delay in the project for example example you will measure the extent of the understanding of the risk the availability of the data around the risk and the reliability of the data which you have risk probability and impact assessment is another data analysis technique in this assessment we will consider the probability of a specific risk and the impact the potential effect usually the effect will be on one or more of the project objectives like the schedule the cost quality or per performance so the key outcome of applying this technique is having the probability and the impact of each identified project risks usually impacts will be negative for threats like it will be a delay on the schedule and it will be a saving in the budget for example when it comes to Opportunities probability and impact are assessed for each identified individual project risk risks can be assessed in interviews or meetings with participants selected for their familiarity with thep typ of risk recorded in the risk register now project team members and knowledgeable persons even they are external to the project might be included in this assessment the level of probability for each risk and its impact on each objective are being evaluated during the interview or the meeting you are conducting with the stakeholders differences in the levels of probability and impact perceived by stakeholders are to be expected and such differences should be explored explanatory detail including assumptions justifying the levels assigned should be also recorded So for a specific risk for example stakeholder X might give you an impact rating of nine and stakeholder y might give you an impact rating of six so you need to expect such differences and you need to record the justifications of each given information risk probabilities and impacts are assess using the definitions given in the risk management plan it's an important part of the risk management plan the definitions of probability and impact risks with low probability and impact may be included within the risk register as part of a watch list for future monitoring so the watch list is a key outcome of the Performing qualitative risk analysis it is part of the risk register that includes all the risks with low ranking the low priority and low impact of or low probability risks are all being documented in the watch list for future monitoring assessment of other risk parameters so after assessing the risks based on their probability and impact you can do further analysis and some of the commonly characteristics assessed for risks includes the urgency which is the period of time within which a response to the risk is to be implemented in order to be effective usually a short period of time indicates High urgency of this risk proximity which is the period of time before the risk might have an impact on one or more project objectives a short period indicates High proximity dormancy the period of time that may elapse after a risk has occurred before its impact is discovered so it's the lag between a risk occurring and the impact of this risk is being discovered a short period of time is a low dercy manageability the ease with which the risk owner or the owning organization or the risk action owner can manage the occurrence or impact of a risk where management is easy the manageability of a risk is high the controllability it's similar to the manageability the degree to which the risk owner is able to control the risks outcome where the outcome can be easily controlled the controllability is considered high detectability is another characteristic the ease with which the results of the risk occurring or being about to occur can be detected and recognized where the risk occurrence can be detected easily the the detectability is considered high the connectivity the extent to which the risk is related to other individual project risks when a risk is connected to many other risks the connectivity of this risk is high the Strategic impact the potential for the risk to have a positive or negative effect on the organization's strategic goals where the risk has a major effect on strategic goals the Strategic impact is high the last characteristic is the propinquity the degree to which a risk is perceived to matter by one or more stakeholders when a risk is perceived as very significant the propinquity is high so these are some of the characteristics which you might assess your risks based on you might assess your risks based on the probability and impact only but you can use additional characteristics mentioned now this will depends on the management style and the degree of complexity within the project interpersonal and team skills that that might be used in this process includes facilitation it improves the effectiveness of the qualitative risk analysis of the individual product risks as skilled facilitator will help the participants remain focused on the risk analysis task follow the method associated with the technique accurately reach consensus on assessments of probability and impacts identify and overcome sources of bias and this is one of the most important roles of the facilitator and resolve any disagreements that might arise during the analysis workshops risk categorization risk to the project can be categorized for example by sources of risk using a risk breakdown structure or by the area of the project being affected or other useful categories like the project phase or the project budget and roles and responsibilities now why you need to categorize risks to determine the areas of the project that are most exposed to the effects of uncertainty the risk categories are being recorded in the risk management plan but in this process we are going to group risks into categories and this can lead to the development of more effective risk responses by focusing attention and effort on the areas of highest risk exposure or by developing generic risk responses to add groups of related risks and you can take such decision after seeing the risk categories data representation techniques that might be used in this process includes the probability and impact Matrix it can be defined as the grid for mapping the probability of each risk occurrence and its impact on the project objectives if that risk occurs this tool is the most important tool when it comes to qualitative risk analysis the probability and impact Matrix It specifies combinations of probability and impact that allow individual project risks to be divided into priority groups and I will show you an example soon risks can be prioritized for further analysis and planning of risk responses based on their probability and impacts the probability of occurrence for each individual project risk is assessed as well as its impact on one or more project objectives if it does occur using the definitions of probability and impact that are documented as part of the risk management plan individual project risks are assigned to a priority level based on the combination of their assist probability and impact using a probability and impact Matrix an organization can assess a risk separately for each objective an example is the cost or the time or the scope by having a separate Pi Matrix for each objective this is usually used in complex projects however it may develop ways to determine one overall priority level for each risk either by combining assessments for different objectives or by taking the highest priority level regardless of which objective is being affected so we have two approaches either to develop a probability impact Matrix for each objective or to develop an overall one here is an example of the probability impact Matrix let's assume that the x axis or the horizontal axis represents the probability we have very low low medium high and very high and let's assume that the vertical axis represents the uh impact so we have very low low medium high and very high and by using this Matrix you can assess the risks based on a combination of the probability and impact being assessed so the risks that fall in the dark gray area will be the ones with the highest priority now the probability impact Matrix will help you big time in reducing the biases it's important that all those evaluating risk use a standard interpretation for their assessment of probability and impact in order to achieve consistent evaluation of risk across multiple projects some people may attempt to bias the results in One Direction or other like the motivational bias and some might use the cognitive bias their evaluation may be biased due to the different perception in both cases we want to prevent or detect this bias and take corrective actions having a description for 1 to 10 in The Matrix will help eliminate some of these biases but the risk team should continue to lock to expose biases throughout the life of the project determining the risk ranking within the project remember that not all risks move forward in the risk management processes as you don't have time and money to deal with all the risks which might be hundreds for Mega projects or large projects this is why we need to think about the perform qualitative risk analysis process as a filter as not all the risks will move to the quantitative risk analysis or to the plan risk responses it's always a better choice to move risks forward depending on their ranking among all the risks the risk ranking is determined based on the risk scores for each risk and simply a risk score can be calculated by multiplying the probability times the impact the main objective is to know which are the top risks that move forward and which are the non-top risks that will be included in the watch list if a risk has a probability rating of N9 or 10 this is not a risk this is a fact this is an issue and these issues are usually being addressed as part of the product or project scope and they are not being addressed as part of the risk management in a traditional environment life cycle now determining risk ranking between projects a Project's ranking as compared to other projects affects the project management plan the project that have the highest ranking as compared to other projects should have the best project manager assigned to it so if we are all using a unified definition of probability and impact and we are using the same Matrix then we can compare between projects when it comes to the risk score and the project with the highest risk score should have the most experienced project manager a highrisk ranking of a project is based on its risk score score as compared to the risk scores of other projects a high risk ranking might cause more experienced resources to be committed to the project and might get more management support so this is the benefit of determining the ranking or the risk ranking between projects within the same organization another data representation technique or tool that can be used in this process is the hierarchical charts now the pi Matrix is very useful when you are assessing risks based on two param meters only the probability and impact however if you want to assess risks based on three parameters for example the pi Matrix will not be useful then you can use a bubble chart which displays three dimensions of data where each risk is plotted as a bubble and the three parameters are represented by the x-axis value the y- AIS value and the bubble size here is an example of the bubble chart where detectability is being measured on the xaxis proximity on the y- AIS and the impact value of each risk is being represented by the bubble size so if you want to assess your risks based on more than two parameters you need to consider tools like the bubble chart the last tool will be the meetings in order to undertake qualitative risk analysis the project team may conduct a specialized meeting usually known as the risk Workshop dedicated to the discussion of identified individual project risks the goals of this meeting include the review of previously identified risks assessment of probability and impacts and possibly other risk parameters categorization and prioritization so it's similar to the risk workshops you will conduct to identify the project risks you can conduct similar workshops in order to perform qualitative risk analysis a risk owner who will be responsible for planning an appropriate risk response and for reporting progress on managing the risk will be allocated to each individual project risk as part of the perform qualitative risk analysis process the meeting May start by reviewing and confirming the probability and impact skills to be used for the analyses the meeting may also identify additional risks during the discussion and these should be recorded for analysis use of a skilled facilitator will definitely increase the effectiveness of the risk workshops and the me meetings keep in mind that the risk owner is being assigned as part of the perform qualitative risk analysis process