Quality, Risk, and Issue Management
What the exam tests
Quality, risk, and issue management test prevention versus inspection, risk process order, and the boundary between a risk and an issue.
Core rules
- Quality planning sets standards; quality assurance audits processes to prevent defects; quality control inspects deliverables to detect defects. Cost of quality includes prevention, appraisal, and failure costs; prevention is usually cheaper than rework.
- Risk management: plan, identify, analyze, plan responses, implement, monitor. Qualitative analysis prioritizes probability and impact; quantitative analysis models exposure. EMV = probability × impact.
- Negative-risk responses: avoid, mitigate, transfer, accept. Positive-risk responses: exploit, share, enhance, accept. A risk becomes an issue when it occurs and needs action.
- The risk register records cause, event, impact, owner, response, and trigger; the issue log tracks current problems and escalation.
Worked example
A vendor API delay has 30% probability and $50k impact, so EMV=$15k. A mitigation costing $8k cuts probability to 10%, making expected impact $5k and total expected cost $13k. The mitigation saves $2k in expected terms and may protect the schedule. Reasoning: compare expected cost with and without the response; do not compare only the response cost with the raw impact.
Traps
- Treating an occurring risk as a future risk.
- Assuming transfer eliminates risk rather than shifting financial consequence.
- Applying quantitative analysis to every low-risk item.
- Confusing QA process audits with QC product inspection.