PMP Process — Managing Technical Aspects Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✗

  Transfer

  Why it's wrong here

  Transferring a risk involves shifting the ownership and financial impact of a threat to a third party, often through contractual agreements or specialized financial instruments. This strategy does not eliminate the risk itself but rather reassigns who bears the consequences if the risk event occurs. Examples include purchasing insurance policies to cover potential losses or outsourcing a specific project component to a vendor who then assumes responsibility for associated risks, thereby moving the burden away from the project team.

• ✓

  Mitigate

  Why this is correct

  Mitigation is a proactive risk response strategy aimed at reducing the probability of a threat occurring or lessening its potential impact if it does occur. This involves implementing specific actions to diminish the risk exposure to an acceptable threshold, rather than eliminating it entirely. In the scenario where cross-training is performed, the action directly reduces the severity of the impact should a key designer depart, ensuring continuity and minimizing disruption to the project schedule and deliverables by having alternative resources ready.

• ✗

  Avoid

  Why it's wrong here

  Risk avoidance involves changing the project plan to completely eliminate the threat or its underlying cause, thereby ensuring the risk can no longer occur within the project's scope. This strategy often requires significant alterations to scope, schedule, or technical approach to bypass the risky activity or condition entirely. For instance, if the risk is a single point of failure with a key designer, avoiding it might mean redesigning the product to remove the need for that specific expertise or outsourcing the entire design phase to an external agency to remove the internal dependency.

• ✗

  Accept

  Why it's wrong here

  Risk acceptance is a strategy where the project team acknowledges the existence of a risk but decides not to take any proactive action to change its probability or impact. This can be passive acceptance, meaning no contingency plan is developed, or active acceptance, where a contingency reserve or fallback plan is established for use only if the risk materializes. Since cross-training is a deliberate, proactive step taken to reduce potential impact, it clearly goes beyond merely accepting the risk and waiting for it to occur.

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