Risk Management Plan Argumentative

Introduction

The Company V. begins an infrastructure upgrade to a cloud project; its new territory of uncertainty that the company is entering. Migrating to Office 365 can result in risk in parts of the project. We have a team of four individuals, whose purpose was to identify the risk, evaluate and prepare a plan for review. The company’s goal during this project is to mitigate and avoid these risks.

Identifying Risk

The team has review the project and found the following top five risks that can impact this project are:

1. Current Exchange Server goes down during this project
Due to a physical server going down any updates, migration, or access to email may stop. The project manager will mitigate this risk by making sure we have a full and good backup of the server to place on another server if needed.

2. Delay in Receiving Microsoft Office Licenses
Due to delays in receiving the licenses from our vendor we will not be able to apply it to migrated mailboxes which will make it unusable. The project manager will mitigate this risk by making sure we purchase this in advance giving us some free slack in the time we receive the actual licenses.

3. Migration Fails
Due to the failure of migrations users will not have access to any Microsoft Programs or their email which will result in slow responses to our customers; shipping will come to a halt, manage services will not receive their tickets and sales quotes will be incomplete and not sent out. The Project Manager will implement a contingency plan to revert back to previous Exchange Server within a day.

4. Updating Active Directory not done in time
Due to next step associated with migrating to Office 365 if updating the Active Directory with the most current information of an employee’s name, phone number, organization, title, and location is not done in a timely manner the project team will not have the necessary information to start the migrating to Office 365; therefore the project will result in a delay. The project manager will mitigate this risk by working with the System Administrator to set times during the day where no interruptions can take place to complete this phase of the project.

5. Syncing Fails with Mobile Devices
Due to the new Office 365 Migration syncing may come to a halt on mobile devices until the user changes settings on the mobile device to point to the new server. The Project Manager will implement a plan to train and create documentation for employees before the switch over.

Risk Methodology

In the methodology section, the materials that are being used during this research, explain how the samples are gathered, what method was used to gather the information. The materials or equipment that are going to be used here is going to be the computers, servers, and the telephones. The reason for using this equipment is because these are used in everyday operations. The servers will be playing a big part of this operation, as it has to be able to transfer calls and data from the old system over to Office 365. Majority of the information that will be gathered will come from the servers, as that will be the most important. The survey of the server will give the best result of what is happening to the system and how the information is being transferred. The other surveys will come from the employees who are working on the computers and transferring data, and the computers itself.

Impact

Syncing Stops with Mobile Devices and Migration Fails are the biggest risk severity level. Updating Active Directory is done on time is in the middle. Current Exchange Server goes down is unlikely to happen but could be a great impact. Delay in receiving the Microsoft Office E3 licenses will have minor impact on our overall risk

Risk Response Control

The process of control risks is an implementation and process of the risk response plans. The benefits of risk response control are improves effectiveness and efficiency of the risk approach during the project implementation. Risk response control includes the following elements throughout the project: Tracking identified risks

Monitoring residual risks
Identifying new risks
Evaluating risk process (A Guide to the Project, n.d. p. 349)
Identified Potential Risk
Current Exchange Server goes down
Delay in receiving licenses
Updating Active Directory is done in time
Migration fails
Syncing stops with mobile devices
The following chart shows a control risk data flow diagram and explains how to control risks using inputs, tools, techniques and outputs.

FIGURE 2.

(A Guide to the Project, n.d. p. 349)

Steps To Control Risk

The following steps are valuable parts of the risk control process of the project. Current Exchange Server goes down during this project
Project manager will mitigate this risk by making sure we have a full and good backup of the server to place on another server if needed Proper documentation
Follow security guidelines
Delay in Receiving Microsoft Office Licenses
Make sure receive free slack at the time we receive the actual licenses
Make sure receive system support
Make sure the company receive proper system training
Migration Fails
Project manager will implement a contingency plan to revert to previous
Exchange Server within a day
Make sure the passwords are secure
Change the passwords quite often
Only authorized person can handle the computer system
System maintenance schedule availability
Emergency maintenance schedule availability
Preventive maintenance schedule availability
Updating Active Directory not done in time
Scheduled timing
Proper documentation of timing
Syncing Fails with Mobile Devices
Obtain the right mobile devices plan
Implement a plan to train employees

According to the A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge book after identifying the potential risks to proper control of the risks the management has to rewrite the project document and update the project management plan (n.d. p. 349). These steps of the Risks Control also effect performs of the integrated change control, monitor and control of the project work and the organization parts of the project.

Risk Budgeting and Timing
The risk budgeting is basically the term for a risk in how the investors will respond. For instance, in this project, the risk budget will be determined by how the investors feel if the project was a success or needs improvements. The investors want to keep the risk within a given range and thus being named the risk budget. So here, a target risk level must be assessed to each investor so that the company knows how much of a risk the company can have for each investor, which should be low. There has not been many complications with merging to Office 365 with other companies and thus should not be a major risk for Company V.

Having a low volatility in the merger will increase the investors’ funds when investing in it. The timing of this project will vary on the complications that may arise. Such as the licenses, how long will it take to go into full effect; Not syncing properly, how long will it take to reboot the system to fix this problem; the servers going down, once the servers go down or has malfunctioned, the company would not be able to transfer the data and could potentially lose the data that has been transferred already. So if any of these complications comes up, it could take from 5-10 months to be able to recover and reprocess the merger. But if none of these problems come up, the project could be completed within a month or so.

Conclusion

Overall this project will be a better set up for the business. The four-team members have concluded that this is going to be great software that will update the system. This will allow the Company V to be stress free and avoid all risks. The outcome is that all risks will be avoided at all costs and backs up plans are in place. Preparation is the main factor in this software change and everything is set in order, as it should be.