The demo opens with a title card that displays the text Identify and plan for risks.

Whenever I prepare to manage a project, I know that there will be all kinds of risks involved.

A file called "Project management plan" in Project Professional appears. The pointer is resting above the Develop Risk Plans cell. The pointer moves to the cell below and clicks the Identify Risks cell, clicks the Analyze risks cell, and then clicks the Document risks cell.

There are internal risks, like bottlenecks and technical issues, that I have some influence over, but there are also risks that are totally out of my control.

A document called "Engineering Renovation Risk Identification Questionnaire" opens in Word. In the Have the scope of the project and the duration of the project been clearly defined? row, the answer Needs more information is typed and the task is assigned to someone in the company.

One of the first things I do on a new project is ask all my key team members to fill out a Risk identification questionnaire. This way, we can identify a broad range of potential risks early on.

A document called "Project Risk Management Plan" is opened in Word, displaying the Project Name, the Department, the Focus Area, and the Product-Process fields. The pointer clicks the scroll arrow on the vertical scroll bar, and the document scrolls up, displaying more sections in the document.

Once I've collected their responses, I can roll that information right over into a Risk management plan. I've found several different formats — all of them are really easy to use. Identifying potential risks up front also helps me when I'm planning strategy.

A spreadsheet called "Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats Analysis " is opened in Excel. The pointer clicks the scroll arrow on the vertical scroll bar, and the spreadsheet scrolls up, displaying more rows in the spreadsheet.

Creating a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats Analysis helps me identify where my project is probably fine, and where it probably needs more attention.

A file called "Project management plan" in Project appears, and in the row Documents risks under Develop Risk Plans, the pointer is in the Work column. 16 hours is currently displayed. The pointer clicks the down arrow in the spin box until the time changes to 8 hours. The pointer moves to the Duration column and clicks the down arrow in the spin box to change the time from 1 day to 0.5 days.

This is a great way to evaluate information about potential risks — and analyze our ability to handle them — so we can remain competitive.

The Word document called "Risk Identification Questionnaire" appears again. Then the image scrolls up, revealing more of the document.

Every project contains some risky elements. But by catching them early in the process, I can avoid a lot of unpleasant — and potentially expensive — surprises down the road.

The Word document disappears. The text Microsoft Office appears with the Microsoft Office logo, and under them the URL http://www.office.microsoft.com appears.