Identification makes note of all possible risks that may occur in project

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• Nirja Shah   -Posted on 14 Oct 15
  - After establishing the context, the next step in the process of managing risk is to identify potential risks.
  
  - Risks are about events that, when triggered, cause problems or benefits.
  
  - Hence, risk identification can start with the source of our problems and those of our competitors (benefit), or with the problem itself.
  
  - Source analysis - Risk sources may be internal or external to the system that is the target of risk management (use mitigation instead of management since by its own definition risk deals with factors of decision-making that cannot be managed).
  
  - Examples of risk sources are: stakeholders of a project, employees of a company or the weather over an airport.
  
  - Problem analysis - Risks are related to identified threats.
  
  - For example: the threat of losing money, the threat of abuse of confidential information or the threat of human errors, accidents and casualties. The threats may exist with various entities, most important with shareholders, customers and legislative bodies such as the government.
  
  - When either source or problem is known, the events that a source may trigger or the events that can lead to a problem can be investigated.
  
  - For example: stakeholders withdrawing during a project may endanger funding of the project; confidential information may be stolen by employees even within a closed network; lightning striking an aircraft during takeoff may make all people on board immediate casualties.
  
  - The chosen method of identifying risks may depend on culture, industry practice and compliance.
  
  - The identification methods are formed by templates or the development of templates for identifying source, problem or event. Common risk identification methods are:
  
  1. Objectives-based risk identification - Organizations and project teams have objectives. Any event that may endanger achieving an objective partly or completely is identified as risk.
  
  2. Scenario-based risk identification - In scenario analysis different scenarios are created. The scenarios may be the alternative ways to achieve an objective, or an analysis of the interaction of forces in, for example, a market or battle. Any event that triggers an undesired scenario alternative is identified as risk – see Futures Studies for methodology used by Futurists.
  
  3. Taxonomy-based risk identification - The taxonomy in taxonomy-based risk identification is a breakdown of possible risk sources. Based on the taxonomy and knowledge of best practices, a questionnaire is compiled. The answers to the questions reveal risks.
  
  4. Common-risk checking - In several industries, lists with known risks are available. Each risk in the list can be checked for application to a particular situation.
  
  5. Risk charting - This method combines the above approaches by listing resources at risk, threats to those resources, modifying factors which may increase or decrease the risk and consequences it is wished to avoid. Creating a matrix under these headings enables a variety of approaches. One can begin with resources and consider the threats they are exposed to and the consequences of each. Alternatively one can start with the threats and examine which resources they would affect, or one can begin with the consequences and determine which combination of threats and resources would be involved to bring them about.

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