Call it Murphy’s Law, call it business as usual, but even on the best planned, best resourced projects ‘stuff happens.’ This article outlines an approach to identification and tracking of risks and issues, and includes two templates which you may find useful.
By Brendan Ridge
15 February 2010
Managing risks and issues is essentially about recognising and accommodating their role as a natural and inevitable element of projects so that they can be overcome with the minimum fuss rather than each becoming a source of stress, cost blowouts and finger pointing.
The first document is a detailed agenda for a risk and issue identification workshop:
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It is designed to engage the expertise of all parties in identifying, specifying and quantifying problems in a tangible way so that they can be tackled. It may be repeated at several points during a project, including:
► During Requirements Gathering, to draw out knowledge from the project customer and product users which they may not be aware is valuable. This will increase the accuracy of initial estimates and save the team from spending time exploring avenues that have already been investigated – both are essential in making engagements profitable.
► During Kick-off when conducting Conceptual Design and Initial Planning, with the project team. This is to stimulate active engagement in the project and to draw on the expertise of the team so that major obstacles can be factored into the schedule or budget early. I have encountered quite a few businesses that prefer to just deal with issues as they crop up. This is an incredibly inefficient approach because it does not stop problems or save time. Some risks then eventuate that could have been avoided, and those issues which were inevitable require last minute changes such as unnecessary overtime which burns staff good-will, or going cap in hand to the client to request more time and money for work that should have been forecast as part of the original scope.
The advantage of involving the entire team is that insights come from unexpected quarters. You may be concerned about a cast of thousands being unnecessarily involved in the entire process but the workshop is structured to avoid in-depth analysis of each problem when everybody is present – it just identifies and clarifies problems and specifies who is going to determine the solution.
► At key points such as on completion of the Proof of Concept Pilot, which will illuminate in practice problems which may not have been apparent on paper; and during detailed planning for each new stage (if the overall project has been planned at a high level but detailed planning is conducted stage by stage).
It is worth noting that this workshop has the potential drag on, either because people start to come up with some really obscure, incredibly unlikely risks, or because they fall into the temptation of trying to solve each problem on the spot. In the template you will see the recommendation to have a clear owner for each risk and issue in order to avoid the ‘somebody else’s problem’ phenomenon, and there is a risk that this may result in team members digging in their heels to avoid taking ownership of particularly tricky challenges. To overcome these shortcomings it may be of value to have a no nonsense senior facilitator who is respected by all parties to keep things on track such the project board or steering committee executive.
Finally, this agenda is of course a guideline only, a starting point for you to shape to your own style and the practices of your business. For example, on a small, low risk project the workshop could be incorporated as a short activity within larger workshops, rather than being stand-alone; whereas on a very large, complex project it may need to be spread across several days.
The second document is an Issues and Risks Log:
Risk Registers are fairly common documents. They list risks to enable monitoring, and specific actions avoid, minimise or accommodate them. They are also useful auditing, and also for continuous improvement (when combined with an organisation-wide program to capture and disseminate lessons learnt). I combine risks and issues because their management is really one discipline, and because when a risk eventuates it becomes an issue. This version is designed to capture all the information you will need without being so laborious to maintain that you will give up altogether – give it a try, and feel free to restructure it as you wish.
I use ‘excel’ because it enables you to quickly sort items by priority and focus on pressing needs, to cut and paste information into status reports, and to keep obsolete risks and issues together for auditing without them cluttering the current items view. If you find any of the headings unclear you can also refer to the comment for that cell which explains the objective of each and the content structure (such as ratings for the probability and severity of risks).
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Tools aside, getting people involved in managing risk and issues is not as easy in practice as it should be in theory. This is partially because some organisations have an attitude that if something has ‘gone wrong’ then somebody is to blame. Sometimes this is the case, and certainly accountability is important, but a purely punitive approach rewards staff for hiding their mistakes, a nightmare for the manager trying to solve the problem, so it is not in the best interests of the organisation.
The weather bureau forecasts the future, rather than predicting it precisely, and this also applies to estimates for work. A more mature approach is to accept that obstacles inevitably occur, such as a major supplier pulling out of the market, a staff member needing maternity leave, or an activity that cannot be accurately estimated until other deliverables are complete. It’s not all doom and gloom or creating excuses, it is about unmasking risks and issues as early as possible and facing them head-on to minimise the impact.
Account directors may grimace at this approach, and I confess that selling this to a blindly optimistic client can be a challenge because it often means a higher up front quote than competitors, rather than locking in the work and then raising a lot of out-of-scope ‘variations’. However you use them, these tools will at least assist you in identifying and planning for risks and issues. I hope they are of value to you and help you to spend less time worrying about ‘what-ifs’ and asking your staff to work late to deal with last minute incidents.
BrendanRidge is Senior Consultant with Calibre. Individuals’ views may not necessarily reflect those of Calibre.