During the progression of a project from start to finish, there may be situations in which the project management team and or the project management team leader will find themselves in a position in which they realize that a particular component as to the project and or a particular facet of that project does in fact come with a set or series of inherent risks. Once the determination that risk does exist, it is often useful in attempting to determine where to go there to allocate these risks according to their commonalities, and essentially place them into risk categories. Risk categories are made up of risk causes that fall into common groups. These groups can include risks such as technical risks, internal risks, external risks, group risks, organizational risks, and or, environmental risks. Categories may be stand alone in nature, or, when more specificity is desired, they may themselves be broken down into subcategories.
This term is defined in the 3rd and the 4th edition of the PMBOK.