Overrides Blog

IT Risk Management Strategies

Information technology (IT) is no longer a tucked-away department with little impact on day-to-day affairs. It’s big business that’s involved in almost every sector of the economy, and therefore carries some major risks. Read on to learn the importance of IT risk management.

IT (Information Technology) is so integrated into our personal and professional life that it affects almost everything we do. Due to its widespread impact, it is imperative to talk about risk management in IT. IT project management presents unique scenarios and thus poses unique risks. For example, can hardware, software, apps, and integrations adapt to ever-changing technologies? Frustrations, limitations, risks, errors, or threats in IT can affect every aspect of your business. To mitigate negative results, it is worth investigating IT project management software to help you manage risk in IT and other projects.

Best Practices for IT Risk Management.

Here are six best practices when managing risk in IT.

Evaluate Early & Often: There’s no better time to start the risk management process than now, so begin early. Remember it is a process and so it will continue throughout the project. Then continue monitoring all the time. Risk never sleeps.

Lead from the Top: Good leadership is many things. One aspect is developing a risk culture in the organization. That means valuing input from everyone, believing in the importance of acknowledging risk and keeping a positive attitude about responding.

Communications: Having a clear channel to communicate risk throughout the organization is paramount to identifying and responding quickly and effectively to risk.

Strong Policies: If there is not already a process and plan to deal with risk, you’re always going to be one step behind. This is again why a project risk assessment is key, but so is understanding roles and responsibilities for everyone on the project team, having a continuity plan, etc.

Involve Stakeholders: A great resource that is often overlooked are the project stakeholders, who have a unique perspective and can provide insight into areas where risk might arise. So, involve them throughout the process, from asking for their participation with the risk assessment template and over the whole course of the project.

Get Signoffs: At every stage of your risk management, get people to sign off on the strategy, which includes the stakeholders.

Steps to IT Risk Management.

IT risk management is the application of risk management methods to information technology to manage the risks inherent in that space. To do that means assessing the business risks associated with the use, ownership, operation and adoption of IT in an organization. Follow these steps to manage risk with confidence.

Identify the Risk: You can’t prepare for risk without first figuring out, to the best of your ability, where and when it might arise. Therefore, both manager and team must be alert to uncovering and recognizing any risks, then detailing them by explaining how they might impact the project and outcomes.

Analyze the Risk: Once you’ve identified risk, you then must analyze it and discern if it’s big, small or minimal in its impact. Also, what would be the impact of each of the risks? Study the risk and how it might influence the project in various ways. You’ll add these findings to your risk assessment.

Evaluate and Rank the Risk: Once you evaluate the impact of risks and prioritize them, you can begin to develop strategies to control them. This is done by understanding what the risk can do to the project, which is determining the likelihood of it occurring and the magnitude of its impact. Then you can say that the risk must be addressed or can be ignored without faulting the overall project. Again, these rankings would be added to your risk assessment.

Respond to the Risk: After all this, if the risk becomes an actual issue, then you’re no longer in the theoretical realm. It’s time for action. This is what’s called risk response planning in which you take your high-priority risks and decide how to treat them or modify them, so they place as a lower priority. Risk mitigation strategies apply here, as well as preventive and contingency plans. Add these approaches to your risk assessment.

Monitor & Review the Risk: Once you act, you must track and review the progress of mitigating the risk. Use your risk assessment to track and monitor how your team is dealing with the risk to make sure that nothing is left out or forgotten.