Identify Threats and Opportunities Through Analysis

This task revisits threat and opportunity identification, but now with the analytical tools from earlier in the domain already in hand. Assessing project risk complexity draws on named tools like SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), the Ishikawa or fishbone diagram (tracing a risk back to its root causes across categories), and tree diagrams (branching out possible causes or outcomes visually).

A full impact analysis looks across every project objective at once — scope, schedule, cost, resources, quality, and stakeholders — since a risk that looks minor against one objective can be serious against another. The task also means checking project compliance objectives against the organization's broader strategic objectives, spanning procedures, project plans, and both corporate and regulatory governance, so a risk isn't just evaluated in isolation from the organization it sits inside. As with earlier tasks, empowering stakeholders to independently identify threats and opportunities — rather than relying solely on the risk manager to spot them — is explicitly part of the job.

Study focus: this task is a good reminder that risk identification in PMI-RMP isn't a one-time Domain II activity — it recurs inside Domain III's analysis work too, now informed by the qualitative and quantitative tools the team has already applied.