Risks vs. Issues: Should They Be Treated Differently?

  Risk Management   PM Network  

Should project managers treat risks and issues differently? Duraideivamani Sankararajan, PMP, and NK Shrivastava, PMI-RMP, PMP, weigh in.

Duraideivamani Sankararajan, PMP: Based on my experience in project and program management, I admit there are many project managers who do not understand the difference between risks and issues. Such a scenario heavily impacts the project and stakeholders, as the responses to risks and issues differ.

The key difference is an “issue” already has occurred and a “risk” is a potential issue that may or may not happen and can impact the project positively or negatively. We plan in advance and work out mitigation plans for high-impact risks. For all issues at hand, we need to act immediately to resolve them.

NK Shrivastava, PMI-RMP, PMP: Risk is an event that has not happened yet but may; an issue is something that already has happened. The main differences are related to timing and probability. Because of these differences, the language used to describe risks is future tense: “If this happens, then this will be impacted.” For issues, the language used is in present tense: “We have this problem. How should we deal with it?”

Mr. Sankararajan: Issues are recorded separately from risks in the issues register. In it, we track the issue, issue owner, open date, target date for closure, …

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