Risk Response Strategies for Negative Risks

Following are the key risk response strategies:

• Mitigation

• Avoidance

• Transfer

• Acceptance

Let’s take a quick look at what these are.

Mitigation

In this response, the project team works to reduce the probability and impact of a risk. For instance, creating a plan B could be a mitigation response.

Avoidance

In this form of response, the team works to completely avoid the risk or its impact. For instance, in case your project’s budget projection shows that it may run out of contingency funds, raising a request for additional funds may be a to avoid the risk.

Transfer

In this form of response, the team works to transfer the risk altogether to somewhere away from the project. For instance, you may engage an implementation partner to manage the delivery of a product. That may allow you to transfer the risks related to scaling of a team depending upon work load.

Acceptance

This is the case where, the risk is accepted and no other responses are applied until the risks occurs. This is sort of the default response strategy. If you have identified the risk and do not undertake any other response (mitigation, avoidance or transfer), you will be accepting the risk.