RISK PROBABILITY DESCRIPTORS DRIVERS

Performing POET (Political, Operational, Economic, Technical) and/or SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) assessments can help determine the drivers of the risks.

In addition, the Risk Matrix tool can help evaluate these risks to particular programs (see the Risk Management Tools article). These scales provide a consistent basis for determining risk impact levels across cost, schedule, performance, and other criteria considered important to the project.

Garvey provides an extensive set of rating scales for making these multicriteria assessments, as well as ways to combine them into an overall measure of impact or consequence. Some programs may also include oversight and compliance, or political impacts. For program management, risks are typically assessed against cost, schedule, and technical performance targets. When assessing risk, it is important to match the assessment impact to the decision framework. For additional details, see the Risk Management Tools article in this Guide. The MITRE-developed RiskNAV® tool is an example of a tool that can help perform this assessment. Chapters 2 and 4 of Garvey discuss the topic of subjective probability assessments, as well as criteria for assessing a risk event's impact or consequence to a project.Īs part of the risk assessment, risk dependencies, interdependencies, and the timeframe of the potential impact (near-, mid-, or far-term) need to be identified. This often involves the use of subjective probability assessment techniques, particularly if circumstances preclude a direct evaluation of the probability by objective methods (i.e., engineering analysis, modeling, and simulation). The probability (chance) each risk event will occur is also assessed. Impacts are not limited to these criteria, however political or economic consequences may also need to be considered. Typically this assessment considers how the event could impact cost, schedule, or technical performance objectives. In this step, the impact each risk event could have on the project is assessed. Risk Management: Fundamental Steps Risk Impact Assessment in the Systems Engineering Program Risk impact assessment and prioritization are the second and third steps of the process depicted in Figure 1. MITRE SE Roles & Expectations: MITRE systems engineers (SEs) working on government programs are expected to analyze risks with respect to impact, probability, dependencies, and timeframes and to prioritize risks to facilitate decision making by the sponsor or customers. Keywords: risk, risk impact assessment, risk management, risk prioritization Ranking risks in terms of their criticality or importance provides insights to the project's management on where resources may be needed to manage or mitigate the realization of high probability/high consequence risk events. The results of this assessment are then used to prioritize risks to establish a most-to-least-critical importance ranking. Definition: Risk impact assessment is the process of assessing the probabilities and consequences of risk events if they are realized.

Risk probability descriptors