Contingency Plan
Context
The Risks Zones:
The Green Zone (Accept) - means that the risks within this zone are been accepted by the project and nothing should be done actively
The Yellow Zone (Watch) - means that the risks within this zone are been watched by the project and an objective criterion should be developed for each risk to be tracked
The Red Zone (Mitigate) - means that the risks within this zone are been mitigated by the project (and also watched), and that for each risk a Mitigation Plan must be developed
Sometimes, some of the Yellow Risks (which are closer to the Red Zone) might also have Mitigation Plans
Problem
- While we put our hopes into them, Mitigation Plans may fail to live up to our expectations. They may not be completed by the time we allocated them, they may not end up reducing the impact or the probability of the risk (or reducing it but not in the correct pace) and they may expose other risks.
How can we prevent these failures from becoming a failure of one or more of the project's goals?
Forces
- The project's budget is limited
- The project's resources are limited
- In every project we can identify risks, some more sever then others
- We cannot allocate resources for all the risks
- We need to reduce the project's risks in a timely manner for the project to succeed
- We want to deliver the system with optimal performance
- Some of the critical risks in terms of fundamentals knowledge gaps must be reduced to a certain level in order to enable the project to start.
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Solution
Define a Contingency Plan for each of the highest ranking risks (Red Zone and some of the Yellow Zone), which has a Mitigation Plan.
A Contingency Plan is the activation of an alternate action plan to reduce the same risk within the same time frame, but is usually more expensive in resources or system performance.The Contingency Plan might also require actions that are more expensive in terms of organizational politics - such as using in-house solutions compared to buying them from an external supplier.
This Contingency Plan should include a time frame for its activation - determined by the latest date it may be successfully activated without affecting the project's crititcal path.
Resulting Context
Known Uses
Known uses for this pattern - ones that can be publicly quoted.
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Related Patterns
Of course, a Contingency Plan may also be delayed, fail or be activated too late. For activation of the Contingency Plan see Imminent First.
לחשוב גם על הבצ"מ כ-Pattern!
Accept, watch, mitigate - another pattern Is Mitigation Plan also a pattern or only which risks to build mitigation plan for?