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Is this considered as project risk or project issue?

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Anonymous
Dear Everyone,

Recently there are some debating regarding the risk or issue in my work. Appreciate if you can help me to assess the scenario and provide your opinion.:)

Scenario Description: There is an engineer A assigned to a project. Let's say his assigned work will start on 1st July, and finish on 10th July. In June, the project manager notices that engineer A seems to have been overloaded by too much work recently. If this continues, engineer A may not be able to complete the work on time which will come in early July later. Then the project manager tries to discuss with A's functional manager to find a mitigation method. for example offload A during his task period, etc. At the meantime, the project manager reports this as a "project RISK".

Then another colleague disagrees to report it as project risk, but think need to report it as a project issue. The reason he gives is that he is already overloaded. This is something already happening so it's not a risk. Risk should be something which has not happened yet.

However, I have a different point of view. In this case, he is indeed already overloaded at this point in time. However, his work in the project has not started yet. He has not really delayed the schedule yet. The project schedule, for now, is still on track. It's just a risk that he will delay the schedule. If he continues to be that overloaded until July, then he will really delay the schedule and it will turn into an issue.

If scenario changes, engineer A is already overloaded, he is already doing the project task, and A's project task has already been overdue for 5 days. Then it's an issue because the negative impact has already occurred.

In summary, here is my understanding.
An issue is something which has already imposed a bad impact to the project (schedule already delayed, budget already overrun, scope already creep..etc)
A risk is something which will potentially and might impose a bad impact to the project in future regardless of whether it's happening now or not. However, at this point of time, the project performance baseline has not deviated. We can still apply risk mitigation to avoid a bad impact on the project.


If you face this scenario, will you report it as a project risk or project issue? Any opinion is welcomed.
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Mukul Srivastava Project Manager| Aggreko UK Limited Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Our PMO has a very simple approach to such scenario that comes probably from different bodies of knowledge than PMI.
Risk is something that can be mitigated, transferred, avoided or accepted in favor of the project KPIs. However, issue is something that cannot be managed in project's favor and is unavoidable and you need to plan project KPIs knowing these issues e.g. mandatory leave for staff, monsoon period on a construction site, mandatory holidays for public staff or mandatory working hrs for staff.
In your case, It is an issue if he is the only capable engineer( to project requirements) in your organization and is bound to work on other projects , probably a decision by the executive management of your company. You will have to manage your schedule knowing this issue.
It will be risk if your organization has other capable engineers who can mitigate your risk to schedule by sharing his workload.
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Sanjay Kumar Project Manager| KritiKal Solutions India
Jun 20, 2019 6:31 PM
Replying to Eric Isom
...
Actually, you have BOTH an issue and a risk. The issue you have is closely related to the risk, but they are not quite the same.

To clarify this, you have to look at the PMBOKĀ® Guide's definitions of issue and risk:

Issue - a current condition or situation that may have an impact on the project objectives.

Risk - an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on one or more project objectives.

Issues and Risks are similar in that they may affect project objectives. They are different in that issues are CURRENT conditions or situations, while risks are UNCERTAIN events or conditions. An issue is something that has happened, or is happening. A risk is something that might happen.

You have an overloaded engineer. That's an issue. It's current, and it may affect project objectives. It needs to be added to the issue log, and assigned to someone to deal with it.

Your overloaded engineer might not deliver on time. That's a risk. It may or may not happen, but if it does, it has an effect on project objectives. (Assuming that late delivery of this engineer's work will indeed affect project outcomes, which it might not if it's not on the critical path.) It should be added to the risk register, prioritized using qualitative risk analysis, risk responses planned, and assigned to someone.

This issue and risk are closely related, and have the same root cause, and should probably both be assigned to the same person. You will at least need to coordinate them, and you may want to manage them together using just risk management (which provides more tools & techniques for managing them), and use the issue log simply to keep a record of the occurrence.

Also note that the PMBOKĀ® Guide (p.96) describes the issue log saying "Throughout the life cycle of a project, the project manager will normally face problems, gaps, inconsistencies, or conflicts that occur unexpectedly and that require some action so they do not impact the project performance."

Notice that these are things that occur UNEXPECTEDLY, meaning that they were not identified risks. At a minimum, this means that the issue log includes items that were not identified as risks, and so did not go through risk analysis & response planning.

Some may argue that risks that occur don't belong in the issue log because they were expected, and are being managed in the risk register. Personally, I like to have them in issue log in order to have a single place that lists all current situations, whether expected or unexpected.
Agree, but only on definition of the issue and description.

However PMI also says that even if certain, but hasn't occurred cannot be categorized as Issue. It will remain as Risk (even if probability of the occurrence is 100%) until realized.
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