Risk Management Professional (PMI-RMP)

Syllabus of PMI-RMP exam is based on five project risk domains as set by PMI itself. You need to have a deep understanding and memorization of important elements of these domains to pass the PMI-RMP exam. Following is a detailed overview of each of the 5 project risk domains of PMI-RMP:

1.      Risk Strategy And Planning

Domain I: Risk Strategy and Planning is based upon policy development, different procedures and processes for risk assessment, effective planning, and positive response. This domain constitutes 19 – 20% of PMI-RMP exam. It has 5 tasks, which include:

• Develop the suitable risk assessment processes and tools as per the nature of the project. It helps in quantifying the stakeholder’s risk tolerance towards any risk and determine the risk threshold for the project.
• Update risk policies and procedures using other important project documents such as lessons learned register and risk audit reports.
• Develop and formulate a project risk strategy that is by the goals and objectives of the project. It helps in developing a risk management plan.
• Produce a risk management plan that can provide a basis for the effective risk management processes. This consults project information, external factors, stakeholder expectations, and organizational policies.
• Establish evaluation criteria for risk management, which is based on project baselines and objectives.

2.      Stakeholder Engagement

Domain II: Stakeholder Engagement is related to the promotion of understanding of project risk management for all the important project stakeholders and team members. This domain ensures that stakeholder risk tolerance and prioritization of project risks is done beforehand.

This domain constitutes 19 – 20% of PMI-RMP exam. It has 9 tasks, which include:

• Promote a common understanding of the importance of risk management and coming up with a risk management plan in the initial phase of the project.
• Interact and coach stakeholders regarding risk principles and processes.
• Train the team members for the effective implementation of risk processes.
• Use different tools and techniques to assess stakeholder’s project risk tolerance.
• Identify stakeholder’s attitude towards risks to come up with timely strategies.
• Engage stakeholders to form a consensus over risk priorities.
• Share risk-related recommendations with the stakeholders through effective means of communication. It improves risk response and helps in its execution.
• Decide the risk ownership along with stakeholders to achieve effective risk-based decisions.
• Develop a proper means for communication of all the risk related information in time to enhance transparency and trust among team members and project stakeholders.

To carry out these tasks, a project manager must have all the risk-related information, reports on the potential risks, project stakeholder information, and effective ways to train stakeholders as well as team members regarding risk management. Only through these skills and knowledge can this domain of project risk management be gone through.

3.      Risk Process Facilitation

Domain III: Risk Process Facilitation involves different activities that facilitate risk identification and then help with evaluation, prioritization, and response among the project team members.

This domain makes up 25 – 28% of the PMI-RMP exam. The 7 tasks for this domain are:

• Applying various tools and techniques to identify the risk tolerance factor as well as determine all the critical risk levels.
• Identify the risks to understand and determine the risk exposure of the project. This task is of great importance for both project team members as well as project stakeholders.
• Apply different qualitative and quantitative methods for proper risk prioritization and planning for future ease.
• Develop a risk response strategy, and suitable actions based on the information determine above.
• Formulate a project contingency reserve that is based on risk exposure.
• Provide this data to cost and schedule managers to make up the budget and project schedule accordingly.
• Allow for experimentation that helps in validating the potential of risk response and evaluate the chances of the project’s success with the respective risk control strategy.

The important approaches that can be used throughout this domain are risk response types for implementation of proper risk strategy, contingency management tools, group decision making, risk monitoring and control techniques, and group creativity techniques. Some of the important techniques include brain-storming and Delphi techniques. Also, make use of analytical software tools for better results.

4.      Risk Monitoring And Reporting

Domain IV: Risk Monitoring and Reporting deals with risk monitoring as well as evaluating risk response keeping in view the established metrics. It also involves communicating risk response performance with project team members and stakeholders on time.

This domain has 19 – 20% of PMI-RMP exam questions coming from. The 7 tasks for this domain include the following:

• Document and update project risk information periodically. It helps in maintaining complete information that can be utilized at any moment.
• Coordinate with the project manager to integrate risk management processes and strategies throughout the project.
• Create reports that include the analysis of risk potentials and responses based on evaluation metrics as per risk and communication management plan.
• Monitor risk response metrics by analyzing all the important project activities.
• Analyze risk process performance to come up with risk process improvements.
• Keep the risk management plan updated so that it conforms to all the internal and external factors that influence or might influence the process.
• Constitute the risk lessons learned in the risk management plan, risk register risk audit, risk process performance reports, and all the other related important project documents accordingly so that you can come up with improvements. It helps a lot in future risk planning.

The important knowledge and skills for this domain include a good assessment of the potential risks, defining suitable metrics and parameters to monitor and analyze the performance, using risk management techniques effectively such as a cause-and-effect diagram, fishbone diagram, and risk probability and impact metrics.

5.      Perform Specialized Risk Analysis

Domain V: Perform Specialized Risk Analysis is all about using specialized qualitative and quantitative approaches and activities by project risk management professionals to perform analysis. The last domain makes up 14 – 16% of PMI-RMP exam questions. It has only 3 tasks, which are:

• Use advanced quantitative activities and specialized qualitative approaches to draw an estimate of overall risk exposure of the project.
• Analyze the risk data by using SWOT (strengths-weakness-opportunities-threats) analysis. Apply this approach on the risk strategy and process in order to recommend the process improvements for better and efficient results.
• Perform specialized risk analysis using advanced tools and techniques.

The important tools and techniques that help in performing specialized risk analysis include the following:

1. Delphi method: It is a structured communication method that is based on the judgments of a panel of experts. This method is highly used during the meeting to identify and analyze the risk process.
2. Nominal group technique: This process includes problem identification, solution generation, and decision making. It identifies the strengths and weakness of an implemented procedure and the achieved outputs.
3. Monte Carlo analysis: These are based on numerical data. This uses randomness to solve problems. It utilizes a probability distribution to calculate uncertainties.
4. Critical path analysis: It determines the time required to complete each project activity or task. Accordingly, the risk processes are given a scheduled time in the project schedule to ensure that they are being carried out to their full potential. With critical path analysis, a good project risk performance analysis is drawn by checking whether the process conforms to the schedule or not.
5. Cost-benefit analysis: This technique helps in analyzing the decisions. It compares the benefits of any process with the cost required to complete that process. It helps in analyzing different approaches to come up with the best one to deal with project risks.
6. Variance analysis used earned value method (EVM): This approach helps in analyzing and comparing planned performance with that of actual performance. EVM method helps a lot in monitoring and controlling the risk strategies using mathematical equations to calculate variances.

Using these tools, techniques, and approaches can highly help with the accurate analysis of the risk performance.

Conclusion

Thus, these are the six domains that make up the 150 questions of PMI-RMP exam. Having an in-depth knowledge of these domains along with the activities and approaches; tools and techniques; and skills of these domains is extremely important before applying and sitting in the PMI-RMP exam. Several educational institutions and study guides can be used to gain knowledge of these project risk domains.

An important thing to remember is that PMI-RMP certification is valid for 3 years only. To get the certification renewed, you need to earn and report 30 professional development units (PDUs) within these 3 years. Once done, it is renewed for another three years.