The correct answer is B. Conduct a retrospective meeting with stakeholders and inquire about what went well and what could be improved on future projects.
The question focuses on a completed project and asks what the risk manager should do after the executive sponsor requests a deep review of what went wrong for the benefit of future projects. This is a classic lessons learned and risk closure activity. A retrospective with stakeholders is the most complete and effective approach because it captures multiple perspectives on what happened, what worked, what failed, and what should be improved in future similar initiatives.
A retrospective goes beyond reviewing documents. It helps uncover root causes, process gaps, missed warning signs, ineffective responses, communication failures, and organizational learning opportunities. Because the company plans to develop more web applications, the objective is not only to analyze the past but also to improve future risk management and delivery performance.
Why the other options are incorrect:
A. Gather the project ' s status reports and meeting minutes to determine when issues occurred and how quickly the issues were addressed. These documents may support the review, but they are not enough by themselves for a full deep-dive. They provide historical evidence but not the richer insight gained from stakeholder reflection.
C. Work with the project manager to determine if additional resources could have prevented or mitigated the issues that arose on the project. This is too narrow. The project may have suffered from many causes beyond resource limitations, including planning weaknesses, requirements issues, inadequate risk responses, vendor problems, or governance gaps.
D. Review the project ' s risk register and determine how comprehensive and effective each risk and issue response was. Reviewing the risk register is useful, but it is still narrower than a full retrospective. Some realized issues may never have been captured properly in the register, and the sponsor requested a broader deep-dive into what went wrong overall.
Best-practice reasoning:
At project closure, organizations should capture lessons learned through structured review with relevant stakeholders. This supports continuous improvement, improves future risk identification and response planning, and strengthens organizational process assets.
Reference-aligned basis:
This answer is consistent with standard risk management guidance that emphasizes:
lessons learned and retrospective reviews at project or phase closure,
stakeholder participation in evaluating what worked and what did not,
updating organizational knowledge for future projects.
[References:, PMI, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), Monitor Risks and Project/Phase Closure, PMI, Practice Standard for Project Risk Management, ISO 31000, continual improvement and organizational learning principles, , ]
