Articulate Risks As Events

Andrea Brockmeier is the Director of Project Management at Watermark Learning. She has 20+ years of experience in project management practice and training.

  Risk Management   ProjectsAtWork  

Failure to identify risks as potential future events renders probability evaluation meaningless, response planning problematic, and issue identification impossible. So how do you transform those bad things we are concerned about into risks we can clearly identify and appropriately measure and manage?

In my experience, I find that most people know what risk management is, but many people struggle with identifying risks. Risk registers often include a list of risks such as “The infrastructure is outdated,” or “We aren’t sure how much Sam will be available for the project.” 

These are certainly concerns that we should be thinking about, but are they risks? I would suggest that no, they aren’t. The first one is simply a statement of fact; the second one is an uncertainty. Risks may derive from circumstances or uncertainties like these, but the most effective way to articulate a risk is to express it as an event. It’s something that could happen. 

Why does it matter? First, the importance of articulating risks as events comes into play when we get to quantifying them, particularly the probability. When stated as facts or uncertainties, the probabilities are rather meaningless. 
For example, let’s take the first one: “The infrastructure is outdated.” On a probability scale of 1-5 with 1 being not…

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