Risk management - Issue based
Issue based
Issue based risk assessment has an advantage of being straight forward and generates potential problems largely based upon experience.
Covers obvious areas
Being a method that is based upon previous experience there is a danger that old ground is covered and the obvious areas are investigated.
Opportunities for more creative thinking may be limited.
Pigeon holes
It is easy to compartmentalise your thinking in the relevant areas of commercial, technical etc and miss the relationships between the departments.
Can generate checklists
Whilst useful in some circumstances as they are simple you will need to be aware of their limitations.
These are discussed more in the elsewhere [see Checklists].
Beware of yesterday’s mistakes
Good review procedures from previous procedures will provide lessons that may well apply to other projects. You should be aware of these.
Not exhaustive
This method does not promote creativity and can encourage a narrow approach. Hence, many risks may well be missed.
No assessment of overall risks
The method does not allow you to assess the impact of risks in a meaningful way that can be aggregated over the project or at interim points.
The aim is to cover the areas like financial, regulatory etc over the project lifecycle.
CONCEPT
IdeaPLAN
DesignPlan
Allocate
EXECUTE
Carry out the planTERMINATION
DeliverReview
Support
You would brain storm each area to try to add some degree of creativity.
This method may just lead to a check list of ‘issues’ without much understanding of them in terms risks, response and impacts on the project.