Risk management in reporting

- I once had the hair-raising task of taking 12 kids camping. Getting everyone's attention, then successfully communicating when I was needing them to hear was one of the biggest challenges of my life. You wouldn't think communicating something on a project would be as difficult as working with those kids. However, communicating something as comprehensive as the risk on your project can be a far-reaching and tedious task. Incorporating risk management into your regular reporting approach is a great way to bring your risk management to light and keep a bit of balance in your own life.

Here are some tips to do that. First and foremost, put a risk section in your regular status report. Discuss what you've accomplished, deadlines you might have missed, and risk mitigation tasks you're going to be tackling in the next reporting period. Status reporting should be concise, consistent, and frequent. So should your references to risk. Documenting risks in your status report ensures you're communicating the risk to your project team, keeping your sponsor up to date on the true position of your project, preparing stakeholders for any corrective action you may need to take, and shows you're planning ahead.

The second way to incorporate risk management in your reporting is to use your project schedule. It's a good practice to associate risks with tasks. Using dates from your project schedule, you can create sections in your schedule or risk response plan for risks that have been bypassed, that you must be aware of in the moment, and that you'll be looking at in future periods. A third technique is to distribute significant parts of your risk response plan.

Highlights the risks you're currently focused on and provide details to stakeholders that can help you detect and manage them. This is particularly helpful if you need to provide more detail on your risks or your organization has a particular sensitivity to a certain risk. For example, if your organization is sensitive to schedule risk, you might have a separate, detailed report to indicate when your schedule has varied from the plan. You can include details as to why it's varied and any specific actions you're planning to get you back on schedule.

During times when there are lots of schedule risks, your risk response plan extract can go even further. You can detail the risk triggers and the actions to take if the risk triggers are noticed. It's also useful to make note of any meetings or communications that happen around the risks, such as a phone call or email. This basically highlights how you're managing the risk throughout your project. Make the effort to focus on your risk reporting, and you'll likely be able to suggest the best way to enhance or avoid most any risk that can surface on your project, and none of your kids or project stakeholders will get lost in the woods.