Risk assessment meeting

You met with your department manager, a few of the stakeholders, and the sponsor last week to review the list of possible risks. They accepted most of your risks and agreed that the next step was the assessment. There was some confusion, however, over how that step should be completed. Apparently, a prior project manager did a poor job with risk assessment and felt that it was an unnecessary activity. This resulted in the project encountering several risks and always being in "fire-fighting" mode. Several of the stakeholders (who were impacted most by this mode) want a much more formal approach taken to risk assessment (as does the CEO).

You have scheduled a risk assessment meeting for later this week. Create a pre-read document for the meeting participants that will walk them through how you will run the meeting and what they should prepare in advance. In your one- to three-page document, be sure to address the following:

Who will you involve? (number of people, roles, project responsibilities)
How will you manage the group?
What is your process for assessing the risks? What techniques will you use?
Where will you start?
In preparation for the meeting and to help you focus on the upcoming task, review your list of risks. Practice the various techniques you will use by assessing at least fifteen of your risks. Create a grid for this activity. Use a qualitative method to identify the high priority and low priority risks. Provide a rationale for your responses. Then, using a semi-quantitative method, create a risk score and probability/impact matrix for the remaining risks. The columns should be organized as follows:

Risk event
Probability
Rationale for probability
Impact
Rationale for impact
Next steps (describe what you need to do with this risk event next: nothing, further analysis, or determine actions)
Be sure to include both your pre-read document and your risk worksheet.