Risk Perspectives and Their Application
Risk perspectives and their application
MoR uses perspectives to apply risk management consistently at different organisational levels. The main perspectives are strategic, programme, project and operational. Each has a different focus, time horizon, stakeholder set and level of detail. The exam tests whether you can recognise which perspective a risk belongs to and how assessment and response should change.
Perspective characteristics
- Strategic: whole-organisation direction, long-term horizons, external environment, board-level appetite.
- Programme: delivery of benefits through a group of projects, cross-project dependencies and tranche risks.
- Project: delivery of defined outputs within scope, time, cost and quality constraints.
- Operational: day-to-day services, business continuity, health and safety, customer impact.
Risks can exist at one level and escalate to another. The same event may be assessed differently because objectives, scales and appetite differ.
Worked example
Loss of a key supplier at project level may be scored on delivery delay and cost overrun, with a response to qualify an alternative supplier. At programme level, the same event may threaten benefit realisation across several projects; the response may include portfolio-level supplier diversification. At strategic level, it may affect reputation and market share, requiring board-level scenario planning. The reasoning is that perspective changes the objective against which risk is assessed, not the underlying event.
Traps
- Copying a detailed project register unchanged into a strategic report.
- Using one risk appetite for every perspective.
- Failing to escalate a risk when it crosses perspective boundaries.