Initial Risk Register

It is vital to the success of any project that the Project Manager recognises and manages associated risks. The management of programme and project risk is also a central government requirement.

 

Something that may happen in the future that will adversely effect the project.

 

The future events don’t necessarily have to be bad, for example it could be that your project is recognised as of high importance and is given a massive increase in resources.  Here, the risk might be - is a structure in place that means you are able to cope with your project growing massively?

 

There are two phases to the discipline of dealing with risk; Risk Analysis and Risk Management. At this stage in the project, it is usually too early to discuss these in detail; there are too many unknowns with the project. These are introduced when we develop the risk strategy as part of the Project Planning phase.  However, it is really important to identify risks as early as possible, the earlier you can identify and manage risks the better.

 

The risk register is a document you use to record, track and manage risks to your project.

Putting together the Initial Risk Register should be part of the Project Assessment Workshop. At this stage you may not know much of the above information, but that is to be expected. You should use the Project Assessment Workshop to discuss what you do know. What is important here is that you focus on getting together a list of the biggest risks to the project and their impact, and fill in the rest of the detail when you can. As mentioned above you will revisit this as part of developing a risk strategy later.

 

It is also worth considering programme risks. If your project is part of a programme of work, try to think of things that might affect the programme and how they would filter down to your project.

 

The next section introduces the next part of the discussions that should take place at the Project Assessment Workshop; The Initial Stakeholder List.