Mitigating a risk means to reduce the likelihood or impact of the risk, or to prevent the risk happening.
Working out the mitigation strategies gives you a backup plan that you can use should the risk occur. It means you are ready and don’t have to think through the problem when what you thought was a risk turns out to be a very real issue facing your project.
Let’s say your risk is that someone will call in sick, leave you short of people to run your project, and so delay your delivery. You could mitigate this risk by hiring temps to cover the absence, or maybe by making sure ahead of time that you have others who could step in, and making sure they are trained appropriately. In this example the risk could still occur, but you are more prepared and have options to reduce the impact.
If your risk was that you suspected a key supplier might not deliver vital supplies on time, you might mitigate the risk by working with another supplier. Or using two suppliers, or carrying more supplies in stock, or including penalty clauses in your contact with the vendor. In this case you are reducing the likelihood of the risk occurring.
You can see that there might be many ways of mitigating any one risk. Thinking through mitigation is an opportunity for you to think creatively.
Working out the mitigation can also mean you revise your original assessment of the risk. You might decide that the mitigation steps are sufficient to reduce the likelihood or severity of the risk so much that you are comfortable in reducing the score of the risk, and giving it less attention. Or, you might find few or no mitigation strategies, and so want to raise the score of the risk and keep it on your radar.
When you have identified your project risks you should review your project plan and determine if you want to make any changes. Do you need to add more contingency to any of your tasks? Do you need to add tasks you need to complete as part of your risk mitigation strategy? It might seem that you are making your plan more difficult to complete, but making your plan more realistic is a preferable option to ignoring risk and having it derail your project – that would be more expensive in the long run.
With your plan in place and risks identified you are close to being able to publish your plan.
