When you lose a key project member, what do you do to reduce risk to your project?

Increase communication With all team. 

Give the trust to the team member and let him believe that he can finish the project. 

Increase you monitoring and controlling to the team to reduce the risk. 

1- Redistribute the work.

2- Find a substitution to do the work

3- Minimize the activities or cancel them if it is possible.

 I have learned that cross training and increased communication of which team member is doing what and how they are doing it is key. Team members must be familiar with what the other team members are responsible for and how the process is progressing. Cross training and increased communication can greatly decrease negative outcomes when team members drop, for whatever reason.

Risk management is a proactive management stream, thus when planning for projects it should be noted that losing a key employee is a valid sratategic risk that should be shared.

the best risk sharing methodology is to prepare substituites for each role.

More, creating team thinking mentality within the organizational culture is a very important tip. Each an every member within the project should understand the main objective and is able and motivated to work toward acheiveing this objective.

Building an aware oragnizational culture "understanding organization"  is a key risk reduction methodolgy that can fullfill the gaps and reduce the impact of losing employees.

be 

What I have done is :

a) Explained the current situation to the management

b) Communicated with team

c) Searched for possible internal resource 

d) Analyzed the ciriticality 

e) Liased with HR department

f) Redistrubution of work in required manner

g) Personal interaction with all releated department heads

Agree with Mr.: Arinjay Dadhich

As a successful project manager ...

1-  you should not be taken by surprise when any person leaves your team. i.e. you should have enough openness and mutual trust with your team members to be aware of what's going on 2-  Any professional who understands and respects his/her professionalism and ethical conduct should make his/her project manager aware of such decisions of leaving early in advance 3-  In all cases, effective and successful project manager should always have their Plan-B and even Plan-C for such situations in cooperation with HR who is usually in charge of HR retention/attriction and succession planning