Risk register (template) – get surprises under control

As promised when I recorded the risk management podcast episodes with Cornelius Fichtner, here is the documentation on my risk register template. Risk management always involves several steps:

1. risk/opportunity identification
2. qualitative analysis
3. quantitative analysis (optional)
4. response planning
5. risk/opportunity monitoring & controlling

This template supports the first two and the last two steps, serious quantitative analysis requires specialized tools (click to enlarge):

A crucial aspect of the template is priorization of risks and opportunities based on their probability and impact:

Risks and opportunities are classified as small, middle, high and fatal. This scheme has to be adapted for each organization.

Usage

Goal	Identification, analysis, monitoring and controlling of risks and opportunities
Approach	Identify your risks and opportunities based on documents, interviews and workshops and add short descriptions in the column risk/opportunity. Add the impact description of the risk or opportunity in the column impact. Estimate the probability and choose a suitable %-category in the column % (column group Assessment before). Choose an impact category in the column Impact (column group Assessment before) next. You will get a traffic light in column P (= priority) in the colum group Assessment before. It will be copied into the first column of the sheet. Add the estimated costs or benefit (negative sign) in the column Cost in the column group Assessment before. Next are the entries Strategy and Status. Afterwards you should plan responses to manage risks and opportunities. Describe them in the column Response(s) and add estimated costs for them in the column Action costs. If you like, you can assess the risks and opportunities based on the planned responses in the column group Assessment after. If there is a traffic light in this column group, it will be copied into the first column of the sheet, overwriting all other values. The next four columns inform about aspects of changes to the project management plan (time, budget, ressources and quality) based on the risks and opportunities. There should be a risk owner defined for every risk and opportunity, defining a risk action owner is optional.
Calculation	The values of the choosers are defined in the hidden rows 22 to 29. They are based on best practices in the PMBOK® Guide of the PMI. The matrix of priorities is defined on an extra sheet named priorities. If you add or remove rows or colums in that matrix you need to update the formulas on the first sheet.

You can find the lastest download link for the template on pm-templates.de.