Risk Management Vocabulary

Flashcards defining key risk management terms from the PMBOK® Guide.

Risk

An uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on one or more project objectives.

Risk Acceptance

A risk response strategy whereby the project team decides to acknowledge the risk and not take any action unless the risk occurs.

Risk-Adjusted Backlog

A backlog that includes product work and actions to address threats and opportunities.

Risk Appetite

The degree of uncertainty an organization or individual is willing to accept in anticipation of a reward.

Risk Avoidance

A risk response strategy whereby the project team acts to eliminate the threat or protect the project from its impact.

Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS)

A hierarchical representation of potential sources of risks.

Risk Enhancement

A risk response strategy whereby the project team acts to increase the probability of occurrence or impact of an opportunity.

Risk Escalation

A risk response strategy whereby the team acknowledges that a risk is outside of its sphere of influence and shifts the ownership of the risk to a higher level of the organization where it is more effectively managed.

Risk Exploiting

A risk response strategy whereby the project team acts to ensure that an opportunity occurs.

Risk Exposure

An aggregate measure of the potential impact of all risks at any given point in time in a project, program, or portfolio.

Risk Management Plan

A component of the project, program, or portfolio management plan that describes how risk management activities will be structured and performed.

Risk Mitigation

A risk response strategy whereby the project team acts to decrease the probability of occurrence or impact of a threat.

Risk Register

A repository in which outputs of risk management processes are recorded.

Risk Report

A project document that summarizes information on individual project risks and the level of overall project risk.

Risk Review

The process of analyzing the status of existing risks and identifying new risks. May also be known as risk reassessment.

Risk Sharing

A risk response strategy whereby the project team allocates ownership of an opportunity to a third party who is best able to capture the benefit of that opportunity.

Risk Threshold

The measure of acceptable variation around an objective that reflects the risk appetite of the organization and stakeholders.

Risk Transference

A risk response strategy whereby the project team shifts the impact of a threat to a third party, together with ownership of the response.

Roadmap

A high-level time line that depicts such things as milestones, significant events, reviews, and decision points.