# Risk responses, the pre-mortem and built-in quality > Choose a response for each risk (avoid, transfer, reduce, accept or escalate), use opportunities, find hidden risks with a pre-mortem, and check quality while the work is done, not at the end. - Course: [Project Management Without the Bureaucracy: Run One Project from Brief to Closure](https://productovi.com/courses/project-management-without-bureaucracy.md) - Module: Risk and quality - Lesson 23/32, ~24 min - Source: https://productovi.com/courses/project-management-without-bureaucracy/responses-premortem-quality ## Five things you can do about a risk **Alex Tutor:** The register has owners and triggers. Now each row needs a **risk response**: what the project decides to do about it before it happens. **Alex Tutor:** Five moves. **Avoid**: change the plan so the risk can't happen. **Transfer**: hand the impact to someone better placed, by contract or insurance. **Reduce**: lower the probability or the impact. **Alex Tutor:** **Accept**: live with it, often with a reserve of time or money set aside. **Escalate**: when the response is beyond the project's authority, hand it to the sponsor with a recommendation. **Vira:** For the illustrator: if he's late, I can draw the simple diagrams myself in our usual tool. Then we don't need him at all for topics 1 to 8. **Alex Tutor:** That's avoiding, for those topics: the plan no longer depends on him. Now match the others. > **Exercise:** Match each planned action to the type of response. **Alex Tutor:** One of those five moves is often misunderstood. True or false? > **Exercise:** **True or false:** once the contractor's agreement holds back 30 % of the fee until checkout passes Danylo's test, the risk of a late checkout no longer threatens the 1 February date. ## Risks that help **Danylo:** Odd one: two of our math tutors have physics degrees. They might want to teach physics too. **Alex Tutor:** That's an **opportunity**: an uncertain event that would help. It goes in the same register, with the moves turned around. **Alex Tutor:** You can make sure it happens, make it more likely, share it with a partner who can use it better, or simply accept it if it comes. **Vira:** If I invite both to a demo lesson this week, we could have ten vetted tutors instead of eight, and some spare evening slots. > **Exercise:** Two of Klasna's math tutors have physics degrees and might want to teach physics too. Vira, the curriculum expert, invites both to a demo lesson this week; if they pass, Klasna could have ten vetted tutors instead of eight. What is her invitation, as a response? ## Responses that are not options **Leo:** For the provider's review: I know someone who works there. A "thank you" and they'd push our file to the top. **Alex Tutor:** That's a bribe, and no project goal justifies it. The same goes for letting candidates teach before they sign contracts, or skipping the personal-data consent for recorded demo lessons. **Alex Tutor:** A response that breaks the law, labor, safety or data-protection rules isn't a response. It's a new and bigger risk, for the families and for Klasna. **Hanna:** The legal route exists: submit the provider's documents early and ask for their published review time in writing. > **Exercise:** Which of these are acceptable responses to the risk "tutors are not ready by 1 February"? Select all that apply. **Alex Tutor:** Leo has a shortcut for the provider's review. What do you do? > **Exercise:** Leo, the sponsor, about the payment provider's review of Klasna's account: "I know someone at the payment provider. A 'thank you' and they'd push our file to the top." What is the right response? ## The pre-mortem **Sofia:** How do I find the risks nobody has written yet? Outages almost slipped past us. **Alex Tutor:** Run a **project pre-mortem**. Thirty minutes on a call: "It's 2 March. The physics launch failed. Write down why." Everyone writes alone first, so the loudest voice doesn't set the list. **Danylo:** Easier to say "it failed because" than "it might fail if". Nobody looks like a pessimist. **Alex Tutor:** Then read the reasons out, merge duplicates, and turn each new one into a register row with an owner and a trigger. A pre-mortem that ends without new rows only changed the mood. > **Exercise:** Put the steps of the physics pre-mortem in order. ## Quality built into the work **Vira:** One more failure reason from my pre-mortem note: "Tutors found mistakes in the practice sets in February." I planned to check all 12 topics myself in mid-January. **Alex Tutor:** One big inspection at the end finds problems when they're most expensive to fix. **Built-in quality** means checking while the work is done, in small pieces. **Alex Tutor:** Three habits. **Acceptance criteria** agreed before the work starts. Checks on a sample as each piece lands: a second tutor solves the first ten tasks of every topic. And a **definition of done** that every piece meets. **Danylo:** Same for the diagnostic test: five learners take it before it goes live, not five hundred after. > **Exercise:** Which of these build quality **into** the work rather than inspecting it at the end? Select all that apply. **Alex Tutor:** Last: which line belongs in a definition of done? > **Exercise:** Which lines belong in the definition of done for a physics practice set? Choose all that apply. ## Your turn: a definition of done **Vira:** Then let's write it down. When is one practice set "done"? **Alex Tutor:** Short, the same for every topic, and checkable by someone who isn't its author. Four to six lines. **Sofia:** Then nobody argues in January about whether topic 7 is finished. **Danylo:** And add one line I can check: the files open on a phone. > **Exercise:** Write a **definition of done** for one physics practice set: four to six checkable lines that apply to every topic. > **Key points** > > - Five responses: **avoid** (change the plan), **transfer** (contract or insurance; moves money, not dates), **reduce** (probability or impact), **accept** (often with a reserve), **escalate** (beyond the project's authority). > - Opportunities go in the same register: make them happen, make them likelier, share them or accept them. > - A response that breaks the law, labor, safety or data-protection rules is never an option. > - A **pre-mortem** imagines the failure as a fact; every new reason becomes a register row with an owner and a trigger. > - **Built-in quality**: acceptance criteria early, checks on a sample as each piece lands, one definition of done for every piece. **Alex Tutor:** In the case you'll get the team's raw forty-line list and turn it into the five risks Leo needs to see. - Previous lesson: [A short risk register people actually use](https://productovi.com/courses/project-management-without-bureaucracy/a-short-register.md) - Next lesson: [Case: the launch risk register](https://productovi.com/courses/project-management-without-bureaucracy/launch-risk-register-case.md) --- Productovi Learning. 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