Risk Management: Decluttering your Risk Register

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It's common to hear grumbles about overly detailed Risk Registers. These documents, designed to log potential project threats, often become cluttered with every imaginable problem, many of which are routinely handled by standard project operations. The unintended consequence? An unwieldy, cumbersome register overflowing with potential mishaps that are part and parcel of the expected project journey. 

At its core, every risk embodies three fundamental qualities:

• It occurs in the future.
• It is uncertain.
• Its impact will be significant if realized.

It's crucial to acknowledge that while certain project events may exhibit these characteristics, their routine occurrence in similar projects equips us with standard procedures to address them. 

For instance, consider a software development project. Routine risks encountered in such a project include coding errors, hardware compatibility issues, and poor performance. Though these challenges embody the three core qualities of risk—future occurrence, uncertainty, and consequential impact—years of experience in similar projects have equipped us with standard methods to address them. These aren't unexpected hurdles but rather anticipated parts of the journey.  

Does including such routine risks in the Risk Register add any value? Typically not. The risks themselves simply get recorded and closed off as everyday project activities take care of them. Meanwhile, real project threats are in danger of being neglected, lost in the clutter caused by these "routine risks." 

Risk Registers should only contain those genuine risks that lie outside the boundaries of our standard procedures—those unexpected threats or opportunities that may blindside us. The Risk Manager, responsible for overseeing the risk process, plays a pivotal role here. This gatekeeper holds the key to the Risk Register, discerning which proposed risks warrant inclusion. An in-depth understanding of both risk management and the local context will empower them to effectively filter out routine risks, freeing up resources to record the real challenges and opportunities facing our projects and organizations.

Risk Register by ProjectBalm

Decluttering your Risk Register is much easier with a suitable tool. This is one reason we created Risk Register by ProjectBalm.

Our goal was to automate best practice risk management techniques, and do so via an elegant, usable interface that works with you, and not against you. Risk Register will help you to identify, analyse, treat and monitor risks more easily and effectively than ever before.

If you are experienced at risk management, you will find in Risk Register a tool that works the way you want it to work. If you are new to risk management, our documentation and videos will take you through the whole risk management process, giving lots of useful examples.

Risk Register is fully compatible with risk management standards such as ISO 31000, and can also be used for governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) programs such as Sarbanes-Oxley and PCI. And, of course, Risk Register allows you to easily distinguish between opportunities and threats.

Over the last few years, we've grown to become the most popular risk management solution in the Jira marketplace and we are now an Atlassian Platinum Partner. Why not try out Risk Register by ProjectBalm for yourself?