What Is Risk Response Planning?
Risk response planning is deciding what, if anything, should be done with a risk. It is the assignment of actions to contain, reduce, or eliminate risks. Risk response includes:
- Assigning owners to individual risks
- Selecting options for addressing individual risks or groups of related risks
- Defining mitigation, contingency, and reserve plans
- Reviewing a risk management plan
According to WWPMM, these are the strategies that you can use to respond to risks are:
- Transfer risk. Using a transfer strategy, you transfer all or a portion of a risk to another party.
- Insurance. When you have insurance coverage, you can use it to cover the cost of a risk event.
- Contingency. In this strategy, you set aside funds to be used when the risk occurs or when later containment is deemed to be appropriate.
- Mitigate. When mitigating risk, you take specific action to minimize or avoid the occurrence and effect of a risk.
The PMBOK has a similar definition of risk response strategies, but calls them Avoid, Transfer, Mitigate and Accept. Accept means you are willing to accept the consequences of the risk.