Capturing Risks Accurately

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Risk Management  

Risks must be managed on a project, but in order to do anything to manage the risks they first must be captured accurately--everything else done about risks stems from how they are captured. And if they can be managed effectively, then the project will stay on track and on schedule. But if the risks are not managed well, then the project could easily be headed into a danger zone.

Identifying the risks is the job of everyone working on or connected to the project, but capturing them in order to manage them is the job of the project manager. The following steps will help give you a framework for capturing the risks.

What’s in a Name
One of the first items to determine about a risk is the name that it will be known by. Depending upon how risks are managed in your project or organization, this name might be a very short field or it might be an unending amount of text to describe the risk.

In general, it is best to give the risk a short and easily identifiable name. Something along the lines of, “Resource limitations during coding” or perhaps “Requirements not well defined.” A name that is simple but still conveys the message of the risk will help everyone stay focused on what needs to be done in order to mitigate the risk (or exploit it if necessary). The name is often the first thing anyone sees on the risk; if it is confusing or …

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