Question

You are the new IT Project Manager for the organization you chose in Week 1, and the CFO is needing a risk assessment for migrating from SQL Server 2008 r2® database to SQL Server 2016.  The migration will lead to the expansion of the Cloud Datacenters worldwide. The CIO feels the risk is too high and wants you to develop an Information Guide Handout and Risk Information Sheet for upper management to describe the risks and management of the risks for the impending migration.

Part A: Create a 1- page Information Guide Handout to present to upper management comparing risk management practices to use in the migration that includes:

How risk mitigation strategy planning can reduce the likelihood and/or impact of risks

How often risks will be reviewed, the process for review, and who will be involved

The roles and responsibilities for risk management

Adequate references to support your findings, information, and opinions

A recommendation for the best risk management practice for this migration.

Answer 1

How risk mitigation strategy planning can reduce the likelihood and/or impact of risks

- In normal course of any change or upgrade (as in this case), the focus is on how it will be executed. Risk Mitigation Strategy planning gives focus on what can go wrong and then preparation in that kind of event.

o Managing risks on projects is a process that includes risk assessment and a mitigation strategy for those risks.

§ Risk assessment includes both the identification of potential risk and the evaluation of the potential impact of the risk.

§ A risk mitigation plan is designed to eliminate or minimize the impact of the risk events—occurrences that have a negative impact on the project.

o Identifying risk is both a creative and a disciplined process. The creative process includes brainstorming sessions where the team is asked to create a list of everything that could go wrong. All ideas are welcome at this stage with the evaluation of the ideas coming later.

o Prioritizing the risks on the impact / probability factor

o Treatment of the risks

How often risks will be reviewed, the process for review, and who will be involved

- The risks need to be reviewed at the feasibility stage, and then post every phase of implementation of change from SQL 08 to SQL 16 stage

- It also need to be reviewed post complete implementation based on the risk priority

- Project Managers will be assessing the review and the same need to be reviewed at top management (Business Heads & CTO)

The roles and responsibilities for risk management

- Risk Manager (usually project manager) will be assessing the risks with the team involved

- CTO (or business leader) need to review the assessment on the risks with the mitigation plans

Adequate references to support your findings, information, and opinions

- PMBOK

A recommendation for the best risk management practice for this migration.

- Risk Identification - Keeping the following factors in consideration, team need to brainstorm different failures / risks involved and add in a sheet

Technical, Cost, Schedule, Client, Contractual, Weather, Financial, Political, Environmental and people

- Risk Evaluation – Based on impact and likelihood, the risks need to be prioritized from highest impact & likelihood to lowest (you may use HML or a scoring)

- Risk Mitigation – There can be 4 actions taken for any of the risks identified. Risk Mitigation.

a. Avoid: Take action so that it won’t hurt the upgrade

b. Mitigate: Taking some sort of action that will cause it to do as little damage

c. Transfer: Insure, take backup of all data to avoid any data loss in upgrade

d. Accept: When you can’t avoid, mitigate, or transfer a risk, then you have to accept it. But even when you accept a risk, at least you’ve looked at the alternatives and you know what will happen if it occurs.