Identifying Risk Management Training Requirements

The risk manager's task in present day Stage III: Conscious Competence
environment is to build risk awareness within theThe individual understands or knows how to do
organization at all the levels. To proactivelysomething. However, demonstrating the skill or
address risks, the risk managers have to provideknowledge requires a great deal of consciousness
training of risk management to the businessor concentration.
operations team. The challenge with the risk Case III: The software developer uses a risk
managers is to determine the requirements andmanagement matrix which allows him/her to
level of the training, and the population.check the likelihood of a specific risk occurring in
 his/her project and develop a risk mitigation plan.
In some organizations standard his riskThere is a rating and solution model attached in
management training models are provided to thecase a risk does occur. A process is available on
business operations team. The problem with thishow to deal with cost, time and quality problems
approach is that it does not consider thealongwith the escalation matrix.  In this scenario
awareness and knowledge level of thethe developer is educated regarding software
participants. The approach is one size fits all. Thedevelopment risks and knows how to deal with
negatives of this approach are:the various risks.
- Trained resources maybe provided basic levelStage IV: Unconscious Competence
training repeatedly, thus resulting in unnecessaryThe individual has had so much practice with a skill
expenditure.that it becomes "second nature" and can be
- Beginners maybe provided standard levelperformed easily (often without concentrating too
training, which they might find difficult to graspdeeply). He or she may or may not be able to
and implement.teach it to others, depending upon how and when
- There is no process for improving theit was learned.
knowledge level of the resource to make themCase IV: The software developer is experienced
fully competent.in software development program management.
- The organization as a whole does not have anHe/she understands the risk management
estimate on the knowledge level of the resourcesrequirements, process and mitigation plans. With
on risk management practices. The organizationextensive knowledge and experience on the
assumes that all have an understanding and aresubject, the program manager is able to easily
equipped to deal with it.address the risk management issues of the
program as it is second nature to him/her. He/she
The risk management team needs to identify thealso provides training and guidance on the subject
training needs of employees.  The Four Stagesto the newcomers and junior managers.
of Learning Model developed by Abraham Maslow The above approach enables segregating the
can be used to determine the training needs. Thetotal population in four groups depending on their
model evaluates on two parameters- competencycompetency and consciousness levels. Using this
and consciousness. The adjacent diagram depictsapproach, the risk management team can build
the four stages of learning. In the following sectiontraining programs for beginners, learners,
I am explaining how the model can be used tomanagers and experts. The process is as follows:
identify employees in different stages of learning.Training Population
Let us take a scenario of an information- To identify the population the risk management
technology company, with employees at differentteam can develop a web-based technical skills
levels of awareness and training for riskmatrix. The matrix should contain the
management.competencies and attributes required for the four
Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetencelevels.
The individual neither understands nor knows how- The employees should then be asked to do a
to do something, nor recognizes the deficit, norself assessment of risk awareness using the
has a desire to address ittechnical skills matrix. The population will get
 Case I: A young graduate joins the organization'ssegmented into four groups. This will enable the
software development team. He/she has no priorrisk managers to provide focused training to the
knowledge or experience in softwaregroups.
development risk management processes. The- A training deployment strategy should be
developer does not have an understanding thatformulated which covers the content and the
he/she is missing a critical component of softwarenumber of hours of training to be provided for
development process, and hence is not focusedeach level.
on obtaining training on the same.- Risk managers can determine the progress of
Stage II: Conscious Incompetencethe group from stage I to IV. For the purpose of
Though the individual does not understand oreffective risk management majority of the
know how to do something, he or she doespopulation should be in stage III and IV. This
recognize the deficit, without yet addressing it.performance indicator will help in assessing the
 Case II: The software developer on familiarizingcapability of the organization for managing risks.
himself/herself with various software In nutshell, training business
development best practices models is aware ofoperation resources provides the key to
the fact that risk management of the projectmitigating risks efficiently and effectively. All
should be done. He/she knows the three criticalefforts should be made to identify the training
components of the project- cost, time andrequirement and population. Providing proper
quality, risks should be addressed. However, sincetraining is the basic building block for successful
the developer does not have any knowledge ofrisk management.
the risk management processes, no steps are I hope this article is useful for drawing a baseline
taken to actively reduce the softwaremap for training.
development risks.