Capture and Examine Issues and Risks

Capture and examine issues and risks.

 

PRINCE2 considers that an issue may be a general issue or advice of a new risk, a request for change, or an off specification.  In other words, an issue has already happened.  

By way of contrast and risk is something which has yet to happen, and it may either have a positive impact in the form of an opportunity or a negative impact in the form of a threat.  Issues and risks therefore, will arrive in an ad hoc manner and must be captured in a consistent and reliable way.

 

Therefore, PRINCE2 has identified a series of clear steps that will be used to manage both issues and risks.

 

If any issue can be dealt with informally then the project manager may use the Daily L theog as a mechanism to capture and manage such issues.  But if issues are to be treated formally then the Issue Register must be used along with an Issue Report for each issue.  

 

Even if issues are to be dealt with informally via the Daily Log, they should still be managed in a structured manner.  For issues that are to be managed formally, then the Configuration Management Strategy should be checked for how this is to happen.  

 

The issue should be entered in the Issue Register and categorised.  Each issue should be assessed in terms of its severity (and a sensible severity scale should be identified in the Configuration Management Strategy), and the priority of the issue should also be assessed for requests for change and of specifications.

 

For each issue, its impact should be assessed on the Stage Plan, Project Plan and Business Case.  The Issue Report should be created to support the information within the Issue Register.

 

For risks, the Risk Management Strategy document should be checked to understand what the requirements are for risk management.  In a similar way each new risk should be entered in the risk register and the risk cause and effect including the risk event, should be identified.  In a similar way the risk should be assessed against the Stage Plan, Project Plan and Business Case and a selected risk response chosen.

 

The project manager should ensure that any issues and risks if they were to happen or to be implemented, that tolerance should be checked to ensure that it is forecast not to be exceeded.  If either an issue or a risk would cause tolerance to be exceeded, then the project manager will bring this to the attention of the project board via an Exception Report.

 

Issues and risk status should be reported in the Checkpoint Report from the specialist team, and the Highlight Report to the project board.

 

For more information on PRINCE2 -  GO HERE