The monitoring and control process systematically tracks and evaluates the effectiveness of risk response actions against established metrics. Monitoring results should also be fed back to the prior risk management process steps and may also provide a basis for developing additional risk response strategies or updating existing risk response strategies and reanalyzing known risks. In some cases monitoring results may also be used to identify new facets of an existing risk (or new risks) and revise some aspects of risk planning.

The key to the risk monitoring and control process is to establish a cost, technical performance, and schedule management indicator system that the project manager and other key personnel use to evaluate the status of the project. The indicator system should be designed to provide early warning of potential problems to allow management actions.

Risk monitoring and control is not a problem-solving technique, but rather a proactive technique to obtain objective information on the progress to date in reducing risks to acceptable levels.

Some techniques suitable for risk monitoring and control that can be used in a program-wide indicator system include:

• Earned Value (EV): This uses standard cost/schedule data to evaluate a program’s cost performance in an integrated fashion. As such, it provides a basis to determine if risk response actions are achieving their forecasted results.
• Program Metrics: These are formal, periodic performance assessments of the selected development processes, evaluating how well the development process is achieving its objective. This technique can be used to monitor corrective actions that emerged from an assessment of critical program processes.
• Schedule Performance Monitoring: This is the use of program schedule data to evaluate how well the program is progressing to completion.
• Technical Performance Measurement (TPM): TPM is a product design assessment which estimates, through engineering analysis and tests, the values of essential technical performance parameters of the current design as effected by risk response actions.