Risk Management Register

Risk management is the process of identifying, assessing and controlling threats to an organisation's capital and earnings. These risks stem from a variety of sources including financial uncertainties, legal liabilities, technology issues, strategic management errors, accidents, pandemics and natural disasters.

What is a Risk Management Register?

• Gestaldt Risk Register is a tool we adapt and utilise in risk management and project management for our clients.
• We use it to identify potential risks in a project or an organisation, sometimes to fulfil regulatory compliance but mostly to stay on top of potential issues that can derail intended outcomes.
• While our risk register is mostly used during the execution of the project, it is part of our risk management plan, which is given serious consideration by Gestaldt Project Managers during the project planning phase.
• There is no time too early for your organisation to start thinking about risk analysis in your environment. Therefore, having a Gestaldt Project Risk Register on hand and ready is essential in managing risk.
• Gestaldt Project Risk Register includes all information about each identified risk, such as the nature of that risk, level of impact, who owns it and what are the risk response mitigation measures in place to respond to it.
• Your organisation will never be able to anticipate every risk event that could occur in a project, but by doing the due diligence, Gestaldt will enable you to have a risk management plan in place to respond quickly before risks become real problems.
• Gestaldt Risk Log is used to track project risks, whether by a simple spreadsheet or as part of a more robust project management software solution, will be a good idea to tackle in any project plan.
• We believe that there is risk inherent in everything, and that goes for managing a project or an environment with lots of moving parts.

The Importance of a Risk Register

• Managing risk is strategically working to control the potential issues that are most likely to occur when managing projects.
• Gestaldt will therefore provide your organisation with a risk analysis mechanism to collect potential risks and then map out a path to mitigate risks and get the project on track, should those risks become realities.​

What is Included in the Risk Register?

Risk identification ID: A name or ID number to identify the risk.
 
Risk description: A brief explanation of the risk.
 
Risk breakdown structure: A risk breakdown structure is a chart that will allow your organisation to identify all its project risks and categorise them. 

Risk categories: There are many risk categories that can impact a project such as schedule, budget, technical and external risks.

Risk analysis: The purpose of risk analysis is to determine the probability and impact of a risk at your organisation. Gestaldt either does a qualitative risk analysis or a quantitative risk analysis.

Risk probability: Gestaldt estimates the likelihood of each risk and assign a qualitative or quantitative value.

Risk priority: Gestaldt determines the risk priority by assigning a risk score to each risk,which is obtained by multiplying the risk impact and probability values. When we use qualitative measurements, we will need to prioritise risks with the highest impact and highest probability.

Risk response: Gestaldt employs risk responses to mitigate the effect on the project. Those risk responses are also documented in a risk response plan.

Risk Ownership: Gestaldt assigns each risk needs to a team member who becomes a risk owner. The risk owner will be responsible for deploying the appropriate response and supervising it.

Risk Management Process

• The first step in the Gestaldt risk management process is risk identification. Projects are all different, of course, but for organisations that run similar projects year over year, there might be historical data to review to help identify common risk categories to those types of projects.
• Additionally, Gestaldt anticipates some project risks based on market forces (cybersecurity, IT, Social for example), or based on common project management issues, or even based on the load shedding.
• Once we use our risk register to identify and track risk events, then we employ project management software to take action. Gestaldt Project Manager has Kanban boards and Gantt charts that visualise the workflow as our team works to resolve the risks.
• Our project managers will get transparency into the risk management process while giving your organisation the autonomy to manage its backlog and plan its sprints.
• Collecting the possible risks that can show up when managing your organisation's project will require a systematic approach to make sure Gestaldt is as thorough as possible.
• The Gestaldt project risk register is a system, which can then track that risk if it in fact appears, and then evaluate the actions set in place to resolve it.
• When registering these risks on a risk log spreadsheet or within Gestaldt project management software, your organisation will have a place to put all this data and follow the specific risk event throughout the project, thereby seeing if the risk response actions put in place to remedy the risk are working.
• A risk tracking document, therefore, will keep project risks on a tight leash to mitigate their impact. 
• Documenting risks using a risk register will be vital to the success of your organisation’s project. It will give your organisation a single place to identify the risk, note its history—from where it first occurred towhere to finally resolve it— and even tag the risk to the person who identified it and owns its management.
• On the risk log: your organisation can note the risk score and how likely the risk will impact the project and so much more.
• As mentioned, your organisation will be able to assign risks to its team members in the risk register.
• That person (or Gestaldt Consultant) then is responsible for monitoring the risk and leading any risk response actions required to mitigate the impact of that risk event or address it once it becomes an issue.
• By documenting this process in a risk register, your organisation will be less likely to lose track of these risks over the course of a busy project, which means the risks aren’t turning into real issues that can negatively impact the project budget or schedule and compromise the success of the project.
• Finally, when the project risk is resolved, your organisation will be able to close it. Nothing will be better than checking off that risk in your organisation’s risk log as no longer a problem in the project. Also, if the risk event has been remedied, then your organisation would not want to continue putting resources against a problem that no longer exists.
• It simply gives your organisation more control over its risk management plan and fosters better communications with Gestaldt, its project team and stakeholders.

Risk Identification

• Gestaldt will assemble the project team to brainstorm potential risks.
• Every team member will be responsible for different areas of the project, so use their expertise to help identify potential project derailing risks.
• The team will also want to speak with stakeholders to make sure they have brought their concerns to mind, and are tracking their risks, too.
• The team will be sure to exhaust all risk categories of potential impact.

Creating a Risk Register for Organisations

Describe Project Risks

• The next thing the team will do is to describe the project risk. The team will be as thorough as they can while keeping the description to the essentials. Having too vague a risk will make it a challenge to truly understand whether a risk has become a real issue or not. For example, they won’t write, “The Cyber,” for a risk contingent on the cyber. They will go for something specifically related to the project, such as, “Third-Party Exposure could result in third-party breaches: hackers accessing and stealing the IP of organisations.”
• As our identifying and describing risk, Gestaldt project management software can help your organisation stay organised. Using Gestaldt Project Manager’s list view will allow organisations to have a central hub for all their risks with space to describe them but also prioritise, customise tags and much more.
• Unlike lightweight to-do apps, Gestaldt will give your organisation a real-time data and our list view will show the percent complete for each list. It also allows teams to comment to help them work better together whether they’re working from home, in the office or in the field.
• Gestaldt will include everything that the risk can influence, so your organisation can develop a strong strategy to deal with it. For example, if cyberattacks have been a threat, Gestaldt will identify the actual impact that might have on the project schedule if it came to pass. For example, “Projected cyberattacks in the organisation could risk IP theft in June. This could delay the entire project execution by three months unless adequate post-attack procedures are considered.” This will tell the allocated risk owner to investigate potential options for a cyberattack, so a real risk management plan is in place.
• This is the heavy lifting in the project risk register, so Gestaldt recommends that organisations give it the time and effort necessary to complete it properly.
• Your organisation would want to be thorough, but not excessive. Gestaldt will assist you to keep the risk response plan short and to the point. We will do the research, so if the risk shows up in the project we can go right into action.
• All response plans and implementation strategies will be documented. If this requires a long document, we will add a link or add an attachment to the risk response plan document to point directly towards the planned response.
• Not all project risks are created equally. Some of them have a greater impact than others, so Gestaldt will partner with your organisation to decide which risks are going to move to the front of the line and which are okay to ignore if your organisation does not have the time and resources.
• Here Gestaldt will determine the level of risk: high, medium or low. This way we can filter the register and then prioritise.
• Finally, Gestaldt will assign an owner to each risk and partner with them.
• If we don’t have a risk owner for each and every potential risk, then we might not know about it until the impact of that risk is irreversible.
• It will be imperative to have a dedicated risk owner.

Notes

• There is one last column in the Gestaldt risk register, and that’s a place to collect any notes that don’t fit under the categories already discussed.
• It’s important to have a place to put these ideas so they don’t get lost in the endless churn of a project.

Conclusion: Tracking Risks

• Gestaldt Project Manager is a project management software with integrated risk tracking features that will allow your organisation to list, manage, and collaborate with ease.
• Once a certain risk has been selected, there will be a simple and fast way to edit every aspect of the risk, including its name, description, which it is assigned to, and its level of priority.
• Even better, your organisation will have the ability to add notes, files, images, and other attachments to that specific project risk.
• One of our most powerful risk management features is our real-time dashboard. Our project dashboard will give your organisation a snapshot of its project status and is ideal for catching risks ahead of time before they become issues.
• This unique feature is valued by project managers in our portfolio of clients.

 
Gestaldt Project Manager is a cloud-based project management software that will offer a collaborative risk tracking tool that will give your organisation all the features it needs to identify, track, and resolve risks as they become issues in projects. 

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