A structured process to managing complex interactions between project risks

This paper presents a structured project risk interactions management (PRIM) process designed to take into account the complex interactions that potentially exist between project risks. Projects are more than ever exposed to risks and these risks are strongly interrelated. We propose to include the identification, assessment and analysis of these interactions into the classical project risk management (PRM) process. This process assists the project manager making decisions regarding risk response planning by providing new insights about the potential phenomena involved by complexity, about the internal weaknesses to cope with this complexity, and about the potential effectiveness of proposed mitigation actions. The actions may be classical, but applied on different risks. They may also be innovative, like breaking propagation transitions between interrelated risks, instead of acting on the risk itself. An example of application is detailed to illustrate the validity and the implementation issue of the process.