A Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS) within risk management is a hierarchically organised depiction of the identified project risks arranged by category.
An Introduction to the Risk Breakdown Structure When planning a project to meet targets for cost, schedule, or quality, it is useful to identify likely risks to the success of the project. A risk is any possible situation that is not planned for, but that, if it occurs, is likely to divert the project from its planned result. For example, an established project team plans for the work to be done by its staff, but there is the risk that an employee may unexpectedly leave the team. In Project Management, the Risk Management Process has the objectives of identifying, assessing, and managing risks, both positive and negative. All too often, project managers focus only on negative risk, however, good things can happen in a project, "things" that were foreseen, but not expressly planned. The objective of Risk Management is to predict risks, assess their likelihood and impact, and to actively plan what should be done ahead of time to best deal with situations when they occur. The risk management process usually occurs in five distinct steps: plan risk management, risk identification, qualitative and quantitative risk analysis, risk response planning, and risk monitoring and control. The central point of risk identification and assessment in risk management is understanding the risk. However, this is also where project managers and risk subject-matter experts (SMEs) get the least help from recognized references, best practices, or work standards. The Project Management Institute (PMI) has developed a Practice Standard for Risk Management, produced by a team of subject-matter experts. As part of this standard, the Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS) is identified as a tool intended to assist project managers, risk managers, and stakeholders in identifying and assessing risk.
What is a "Risk Breakdown Structure?" The RBS will prove extremely valuable to better grasp when a project needs to receive special scrutiny, in other words, when risk might happen. The RBS can also help the project manager and the risk manager to better understand recurring risks and concentrations of risk that could lead to issues that affect the status of the project. Following the concept of the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), the Risk Breakdown Structure provides a means for the project manager and risk manager to structure the risks being addressed or tracked. Just as PMI defines the Work Breakdown Structure as a "deliverable-oriented grouping of project elements that organizes and defines the total work scope of the project...", the RBS could be considered as a "hierarchically organized depiction of the identified project risks arranged by risk category." In project management language, risks include anything unplanned and unforeseen that can have a negative impact on the project's costs, timing or quality. (This does not conform to the ISO 31000 view of Risk.) A good project manager should be able to manage the risks effectively and get the project on track. Many project managers and risk managers currently use "home-grown" methods for listing, identifying, assessing, and tracking risks in their projects. These methods include: spreadsheets, listing, generic risk taxonomy, based somewhat loosely on various standards and guidelines.
An approach that simply places the risks in a list, a simple table, or even in a database does not provide the strength of using a structured, organized method similar to a Work Breakdown Structure. To fully understand the risks and better identify and assess the risk, a "deep-dive" into each risk, recording as many levels of identification as necessary, may be required. The project value of placing risks in a structure such as this lies in the ability of the project manager and risk manager to then quickly and easily identify and assess the risk, identify the potential risk triggers, and develop a more robust risk response plan . If all risks are placed in a hierarchical structure as they are identified, and the structure is organized by source, the total risk exposure to the project can be more easily understood, and planning for the risk more easily accomplished.
Templates for creating a Risk Breakdown Structure
The concept of the RBS is new. The PMBoK (2004), barely references its use; however, the PMI Standards team has incorporated the RBS in the Practice Standard for Risk Management (draft for release in 2009). The PMBoK provides an example graphic of the RBS in Chapter 11, Figure 11.4. This reference has as major topics: Technical, External, Organizational, and Project Management. Another source provides the following major topics: Technical, Management, Organizational, External, and Project Management. Dr. David Hillson, in the proceedings of the Project Management Institute Annual Seminars and Symposium, on Oct. 3–10, 2002, provided several different RBS Structure examples, with topics similar to those already shown. Dr. Hillson broke out two different examples, an RBS for Software Development, which had the following major topics: Product Engineering, Development Environment, Program Constraints; and an RBS for Construction Design, which has these major topics: Environment, Industry, Client, Project. Each RBS is broken into "levels", with each level providing a more in-depth "view" of the identified risk. As an example, in creating a RBS for software development, Level 1 of the RBS might be Technical, followed by Level 2, Requirements, followed by Level 3, Functional Requirements, Informational Requirements, Non-functional Requirements, etc. If desired, Level 3 can be further refined with Level 4, Stability, Completeness, Functionality, Interfaces, Testability, etc., Level 5, etc. Once the project team has created its RBS, then individual risks can be identified. Several different techniques for defining the individual risks are available, including brain-storming, surveys, workshops, etc. Each identified risk needs to be categorized, and placed in the RBS under a specific topic (or topics) if the risk spans two or more topics, such as a risk in gathering requirements might span Technical, organizational and project management.
NOTE: the RBS will be different between projects, even projects within the same project area, e.g., construction, information technology, environmental remediation, etc.
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