8.1.   Risk Planning

Risk planning is the activity of developing and documenting an organized, comprehensive, and interactive strategy and methods for identifying and tracking root causes, developing risk-mitigation plans, performing continuous risk assessments to determine how risks and their root causes have changed, and assigning adequate resources.

Risk planning is the detailed formulation of a program of action for the management of root causes.  Risk planning, and the resultant plan, should answer the questions:  “who, what, where, when, and how.”  It is the activity to:

• Ensure the principles of this guide are applied to the program;
• Develop and document an organized, comprehensive, and interactive risk management plan;
• Determine the methods to be used to execute a PM's Risk Management Plan (RMP); and
• Plan for adequate resources, including personnel.

Risk planning is iterative, and includes describing and scheduling the tasks for risk identification, risk analysis, risk mitigation planning, resourcing, risk mitigation plan implementation, and risk tracking throughout a program’s life cycle.  Since contractor abilities to develop and manufacture the system affect program risks, the contractor should be considered a valuable partner in risk planning.  The result is the RMP.