Why do Risks in Jira Align require Owner and Resolution Method?

Question

Our standard process during PI planning is to capture PI risks during the ceremony and then ROAM the risks at the end of the ceremony.  Jira Align forces you to populate the Owner field and the Resolution Method field.

The program may not know the Owner and Resolution Method when the Risk is created, so this is going to be a challenge as our teams identify risks.  Would be better if these two values could be populated when ROAMing the Risks for the PI.

Tina Behers_cd5uzj · Answer

a very concise write up on ROAM can be found here... https://kendis.io/risks-management/managing-risks-roam/

Tina Behers_cd5uzj · Answer

@Lisa Schliker

Jira Aligned uses the ROAM model for risk management. Based on which state you select, certain fields are required.  i.e. owner field when OWNED; Resolution field when RESOLVED, etc.

This is a fairly common and standard requirement for risk management.  Regardless of the method you are using...

For one to say a risk is owned and have no one assigned as the owner, means it will, in all likelihood be ignored. (much as they were doomed to the multiline spreadsheet versions of "Risk Registers"  for years) :)

Likewise, to mark a risk as mitigated and not enter a description of how it was mitigated dooms the teams to repeating the same work to mitigate similar risks in the future...

The controls in Jira Align requiring those fields are there, much like other controls in Jira Align, to reinforce good practices.

Most organizations, upon beginning their use of Jira Align, struggle with the Owned status.  Given that many risks are identified during PI/Quarterly Planning and the identifier, does not know to whom it should be assigned.  A good Agile at Scale practice, if this is the case, is to assign the Risks to the RTE or the PM based on some predetermined 'ground rules' e.g. RTE will be assigned default owner for technical risks when the true owner cannot be identified during PI Planning.  The Product Manager will be assigned as the default owner for non technical/business related or product specific risks when the "true" owner cannot be identified during PI Planning.

This ensures the Risk will not "get lost" and ultimately get assigned to someone to accept, mitigate or resolve.

Hope this helps

Tina

PS IME - the "default" owners (RTE/PM) generally find the real owner within days of the PI completion, if not before.

Allan Maxwell · Answer

I did a quick check and neither of those fields can be made optional for Risk.

One option is to assign the Risk to the RTE or some other role that is frequently reviewing Risks.  You could assign the "Owned" Resolution Method, keeping in mind that the goal is usually to move it to one of the other status ...Resolved, Accepted or Mitigated during the Program Increment.