Risk Management. How can it somehow sound both scary and boring at the same time? When you speak the language of risk management, you speak the language of investors, shareholders, and executives. By learning how to apply risk management to your product, you elevate your product management career to a more strategic level. This session will walk you through the steps of a risk management exercise, and you will leave with a mini risk assessment that you can take back to your company. We will tackle a topic involving sometimes complex and convoluted concepts in a practical, hands-on way. You will go from scared and bored to calm and engaged.

1. Applying Risk Management to Your Product: a Workshop
Section 1: Why Do You Need This?
Of Human Frailty
Reason:
 Denial of Risk
Section 2: Categories  Avoidance of Risk
Category:
 Underestimating Risk
Category:
Category:
Section 3: Identify, Measure, & Mitigate Risk
1. Assign a Category and Define the Risk.
2. Estimate the Impact
 High – it would make an important difference.
 Med – it would make that big a difference. Mitigate the Following
 Low – the impact would be minor.
Impact Likelihood
3. Estimate the Likelihood
High High
 High – I’ve seen this occur fairly often.
 Med – this may occur; it’s not that common. High Medium
 Low – this is quite unlikely to occur. Medium High
4. Mitigated Impact
 Start: the same as the Impact.
 Does not change until after your mitigation actions have been taken.
5. Mitigation Plan – Define the Mitigation Effort
6. Mitigate Your Risk
 Lower the Mitigated Impact as actions are taken
 H Impact/H Likelihood or H Impact/M Likelihood  H Impact/L Likelihood
 M Impact/H Likelihood  M Impact/L Likelihood
Rules of Thumb
Err on the side of caution. Mitigation plan ≠ mitigation action.
Can’t decide if it’s High or Medium? It’s not mitigated
Then it’s High. until the mitigation effort is complete.
Copyright © 2012 Jacques Murphy www.ProductManagementChallenges.com
Tel: 215-605-1088 Email: jacquesm@epix.net
PRODUCT ROADMAPS PRODUCT REQUIREMENTS PRODUCT LAUNCHES
PRODUCT MESSAGING COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS SALES SUPPORT RISK MANAGEMENT

2. Applying Risk Management to Your Product: a Workshop
Section 4: Risk Matrix
Mitigated
Category Risk Impact Likelihood Impact Mitigation
Section 5: Report On Risk
 Stoplight chart. Red/Yellow/Green coding based on mitigated risk.
 Explain anticipated impact of risk.
 Results: some risks prevented, some risks with plans on how to reduce the impact.
Copyright © 2012 Jacques Murphy www.ProductManagementChallenges.com
Tel: 215-605-1088 Email: jacquesm@epix.net
PRODUCT ROADMAPS PRODUCT REQUIREMENTS PRODUCT LAUNCHES
PRODUCT MESSAGING COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS SALES SUPPORT RISK MANAGEMENT