Let's discuss risk management! ✅

Hi everyone,

happy to see this much relevant topic being brought into discussion!

In our projects we use a task custom item type to identify the risks and use custom fields for the risk categories, analysis and strategies. We have a standard list of categories in order to be able to analyze which are the categories with more risks in our projects.

The dashboards help us to keep track of who are the responsibles for applying the defined risk strategy (accept, mitigate, transfer, avoid) and a custom table view inside the project/portfolio is also useful for us to visualize our "risk register". We also have a custom workflow so that the status communicates immediately what is the current situation of each risk.

We would love to be able to have a risk matrix inside Wrike; we did some workarounds to configurate our risk framework inside Wrike and we are happy about it, the only missing piece is the risk matrix.

Have a nice day,

Priscila

We recently launched Wrike to about half of our marketing team, so we are still in somewhat of a learning phase. We love the AI risk measurement feature, and as a project manager, it helps for a quick oversight on our active projects. We have separate dashboards set-up for each team so they can see overdue tasks, unassigned tasks, due dates, all active tasks, etc, for their specific team. This helps when a team member is out and deadlines are approaching. We also have automations set-up to notify key team members that due dates are approaching or have passed. I look forward to returning to this post to see how others are using Wrike to assess their project risk management.

Hi community,

Risk Management is a great topic.

We have developed an SOP where we leverage Wrike to manage our process. All Risks identified go through a Request Form. We ask for the Requestor name for any follow ups, but also key information needed. All of these risks are created in our Risk Repository and we then cross tag to the specific project risk folder for management. We use a Risk Management workflow that was part of Wrike's Risk Management space.

Everything is working well and now we are in process improvement mode.

I'm excited for this thread as my organization doesn't exactly have org-wide risk management strategies. This will be a great way to learn. 

Hello all!

The simple "Task Management" dashboard template has been a great one.

The "Pending This Week" and "Overdue Tasks" sections are super valuable in our 1:1's and team meetings to surface which tasks are in dire need of attention to minimize risk of project delays.

For our marketing team, managing risks is about transparency. Wrike helps us be more transparent with all our projects because it is easier to keep everyone in the loop by using it.

Agree with Priscila - would love to have a native Risk Matrix , too - but we use a specific Project Workflow that includes high level Red,Green, Yellow markers - we use Project Progress to monitoring ongoing risks, and we have teams that will create a separate folder in their brand/client folder to house tasks that relate to everything, including risks or ther brand notes too!

• How do you identify and categorize risks in your projects?
• This is done differently by different team needs. Some ways are: proximity to task/project due dates, client interaction, overall risk level of the client may change the risk level of individual tasks/projects, etc.
• What Wrike features or tools do you find most helpful for tracking and managing risks?
• Dashboards give us a great visual of risks. We use individual widgets to display tasks/projects at risk.
• Are there any custom workflows or dashboards you've created to enhance risk management?
• We have added “At Risk” as a category for many of our custom workflows.
• Do you have any tips or best practices for new users looking to improve their risk management processes?
• Make sure everyone knows it is their responsibility to mark a task/project at risk, if there is any question about its status. If it is marked at risk and an investigation shows it is not at risk, the flag can easily be changed. If it is not marked at risk, but really is, it may be too late to course correct.

We (Brian) created a RAID log that loads via blueprint for all project and we included a checkbox column that if checked copies the item into a global lessons learned Wrike folder which helps us in our future projects.

We're at the beginning of our risk management assessment for Wrike. We have a task custom item type for Risks and a pair of text-based custom fields for Probability and Impact. Next up for me will be the decided action (accept, mitigate, transfer, avoid), estimated effort/cost, impacts to dependent tasks, and how we represent that on our timelines, dashboards, etc. ... and from there, how does that drive our decision-making?

Looking forward to seeing more responses here as this conversation continues!

Our team could definitely use some new strategies, and I'm looking forward to hearing other responses. Currently, we rely largely on weekly production meetings to review overdue and upcoming projects, as well as discuss any roadblocks.

One strategy that has helped our teams manage projects they're responsible for, or have a stake in, is having a widget on their dashboard. This widget displays overdue and upcoming tasks, allowing team members to monitor statuses and identify who is responsible for each item if follow-up is needed. For example, if any projects authored by an individual have overdue tasks, they would appear on the widget. Similarly, for our webinar specialist, for example, any overdue tasks related to upcoming webinars would be displayed for follow-up.

Thanks, Priscila Ferreira. I'm interested in hearing from more of us - in the project management discipline and beyond. Here's roughly how one national nonprofit does basic risk estimation for our internal product management at the task level.

We use a custom field to assign risk on an agreed scale low/medium/high to each product backlog task as it's groomed. For example, coding changes that could affect the donation stream are high risk; minor configuration changes with no impact on funding are low. Product managers don't revise a task's risk downward, only upward, since none of us may have the whole picture. Operations staff review tasks added to sprints, with special attention to higher-risk ones.

Low-risk changes may be deployed any time after they pass testing, while higher risk changes are deployed in a weekly window. Either way, product owners communicate internally with process owners and externally with end users in a channel. Internal users can raise questions at any point through the Wrike task's comments. End users can comment in the channel or get support directly in the usual manner for that product.

Currently we have an Excel that classifies Projects into the risk categories "high risk" "High reward" etc. Outside of that we have another excel to track potential risks. I've been thinking of perhaps integrating these KPIs and risk factors into a Wrike Custom Item Type but haven't figured out how to yet.

In my organization, we have hundreds of similar, but not identical tasks that must be accomplished throughout our publishing season. These tasks move between various departments (folders) in Wrike. We use the new date automation features to reset the start date in each department and then monitor custom dashboards to track the number of days each task has been in a department as well as approaching due dates. This allows us to identify hot items and potential bottle necks before they become an issue at press.

We use a RAID log folder, which populates from our base project blueprint. Our project workflow has an "At Risk" status that is used as needed.

Items are added to the log directly, or cross-tagged from tasks or meeting notes. We use a custom table view to monitor logged items, use a custom workflow, and use custom fields to help organize everything.

One thing that has become key is to monitor more than you think you need to. Someone is concerned about something? It doesn't mater how small, if it's a concern to anyone on your team, log it. Is there an out-of-scope conversation that keeps resurfacing? Add it to the log so you can reassure the team it is being tracked. We can always move items to other projects, if that's where they fit, or maybe they even become a project of heir own.

Right now each log is reviewed & managed within it's own project and according to that projects communication plan. I would love to be able to start looking at all of our RAID items together, since I am sure there is a lot of overlap. Not quite sure of the best approach for something like that, though.

On our team (and within our workflow), our biggest risk is rework. We track the need to go back for correcting said errors by assigning a status of "Re-open/Follow-Up Request" to the applicable task and at the end of the year, we can see how frequently we had to re-process our work based on the use of that workflow status.

We utilize a custom workflow for our projects, which includes a status of "Stalled/Waiting on more info" which helps us identify when tasks or projects are hitting a major roadblock. An automation is setup to ping the assignee to comment with a description of the problem and @ mention their project manager. Then, for each project, we have a dashboard that pulls all Stalled tasks into a widget, and we review those issues at our bi-weekly PM meeting. 

Like Priscila and others on this thread, we have created custom item types to track various risks encountered on our projects (including risks, assumptions, issues, decisions, and enhancements). These items are then logged within a RAID folder for each project. To memorialize items with significant impact or to avoid repeating liabilities, we've implemented a custom field called "lessons learned" with a checkbox. When this checkbox is marked, an automation automatically copies the item to a separate Lessons Learned folder. Our team reviews this folder regularly to help mitigate potential project pitfalls

We use Wrike for our Third Party Risk Management program.  We've somewhat Frankenstein-ed Wrike to suit our needs, using it a bit unconventionally from a "project management" tool. 

• How do you identify and categorize risks in your projects?

Review requests are submitted into Wrike which generates a blueprint with a folder structure.  One of those folders is a Risks folder, where we have a unique Risk Type, including descriptions, mitigations, and risk ratings.  Our risks are Wrike tasks, so we use tasks more to collect information than to use them for their actual purpose.

• What Wrike features or tools do you find most helpful for tracking and managing risks?

Automation provides a lot of support for repetitive tasks that, in some cases, have to be repeated hundreds of times a year.  We also share information across spaces to maintain a project profile "source of truth."  Dashboard's are very effective to roll-up data, however this can sometimes be difficult because we do not have a parent/child relationship with projects and their sub-folders and the data underneath.

• Are there any custom workflows or dashboards you've created to enhance risk management?

We use a workflow and automation that passes a solution review through different folders that correspond with each of the statuses in our workflow.  This helps us organize the reviews we are processing.

• How does your team communicate and update risk statuses within Wrike?

Through dashboards and reports.  We would utilize reports even more if we were able to build and format reporting into something that could be generated into a final PDF document (think MS Word forms with blanks where the blanks are filled in by Wrike project data) vs excel spreadsheets.

• Is there anything you'd like to do in Wrike regarding risk management that you haven't figured out how to do yet?

- Custom formatted reports, as noted above.  Today, we have to export excel reports with data and past it into an Excel spreadsheet to generate a final PDF report used for sharing with our customers. 
- Parent/child relationships between projects and the data within child folders underneath those projects, allowing us to associate that data with the project. (Project/Task relationships are difficult without using analytics, which is slower and not as intuitive as dashboards.)
- Custom field dynamic options.  I believe datahub is heading this way potentially, but the ability to allow submitters using a publicly available online form to begin typing into a field and a list of available options pops up.  This would considerably help our ability to improve request organization, where today we have to manually move around requests after they are submitted.  If the option was not on the list, the requester could add it.  Through selecting an option, the request form could place that request once submitted into a corresponding folder based on the selected option.

This is an area I would like to investigate further so looking forward to reading everyone's responses.  The things we currently have in place are pretty basic but seem to be working for now. We add widgets to our dashboards which show due dates and also the progress bar of projects.

• How do you identify and categorize risks in your projects?
  Risk identification is done through daily health indicators & weekly reviews & risk categorization is done using P&I matrix
• What Wrike features or tools do you find most helpful for tracking and managing risks?
  A standard project s good enough in table view to track risks, issue actions & decisions

• Are there any custom workflows or dashboards you've created to enhance risk management?
  Yes, to ensure risk treatment is done in a standard pattern

• How does your team communicate and update risk statuses within Wrike?
  In the same Project created for RAID Log,by making entries & tagging appropriate action owners

• Do you have any tips or best practices for new users looking to improve their risk management processes?
  Keep it simple, use a standard project for Wrike. Easy to track & easy to view, you don't even need a dashboard, board view is good enough
• Is there anything you'd like to do in Wrike regarding risk management that you haven't figured out how to do yet?
  Automated notifications to users/stakeholders, once RAID item is overdue (not supported currently in automation)

It's great to see that topic brought into attention!

Following this one to view your ideas!

We are mostly using automation for tasks left behind, reports to identify overstressed (with workload) team members and efforts to review what the workload is going to look like in 3 months time. So we plan accordingly.

We often utilize automated messaging to notify assignees when a due date is approaching and overdue. If a task is due soon or overdue, we ensure we set the task status to "Incomplete Details" so we know that it has at least been reviewed and the task is unable to be worked on without further details.

Truthfully, the red dates are a huge ... possibly too late sign. We also utilized dashboards to look at due today, due this week, past dues! For us, we are on the customers schedule though. We can push and push but until they have the resources, there isn't much my team can do.

I have used dashboards that allow me to see what is coming up and what may be over as well as the effort my team has put in.  

This is helpful seeing how others look at risk within Wrike!

Our team looks at risk in a couple of different ways.

• When someone submits a request, we ask if the request is urgent and one of the options for urgency is that the client is at risk.
• We also alert our team members of upcoming deadlines 3 days before the due date and the day of the due date so we can reduce any potential late reports. 

Future state:

• As our client team hones what they do with a high risk client and we get our custom fields cleaned up, I would like to explore how to proactively show risk in a custom field and/or commenting so the owner knows for any projects or requests we have through an integration with Salesforce! 

It's early days for us, but we are creating a project risk and issue log, so that project issues are captured and managed consistently. 

Hi,

We've used Wrike to manage risks for a few years, mainly tied into our security management system, which we also manage on Wrike. We identify risks at all kinds of levels, beyond those relating to projects. For example we look at the threats and vulnerabilities of our servers, staff, finances, equipment, and many other areas, and the associated risks of these.

Like others, we have a custom work flow, use custom fields for things like likelihood and impact, risk rating to filter risks according to their importance, residual risk, etc.

We also have charts to show risks by status, by quarter (based on created date), and so on. We also have a "review due date", a calculated field that shows when each risk should be reviewed next. This has problems because dashboards and charts don't deal with calculated date fields the same way as due dates. For example, when grouping by a due date, you can specify the granularity (day, week, etc), but with a calculated date field, you can't. We have similar problems with other types of calculated fields. It would be great if all calculated fields had the same functionality as normal fields, as we use these throughout our security system.

We also make extensive use of the location field, to tie risks to all other areas of the company (not just within the security system). This means that, from the top down, we can see all the risks associated with a particular area or subject. It also means that when working on a risk, we can see all the areas the risk affects. This "many to many" relationship" between objects in Wrike has been a huge benefit to us, especially when we have external auditors review our systems.

Hey everyone! 👋

Risk management is key to keeping projects on track, and Wrike makes it a lot easier. Here’s how I handle it:

✅ Identifying Risks – I log potential risks as tasks in a dedicated folder, using custom fields to set priority (Low, Medium, High).

🛠 Top Wrike Features – Custom workflows help track risks from “Identified” to “Resolved.” Dashboards keep everything visible, and automation alerts the team when something escalates.

💬 Team Communication – We keep all risk updates in Wrike tasks, using @mentions to make sure the right people stay in the loop.

🚀 Tips for New Users – Use custom fields, set up automated reminders, and create a risk dashboard for quick visibility.

🔍 What I’d Love to Improve – Finding a better way to link risks to project timelines! Anyone doing this well?

Excited to hear your thoughts! 😊

We've just recently switched from excel-based RAID to using the RAID+D template in Wrike with some adjustments - it's more of RAAID+D, as we added a folder for Actions and the business process kicks off a new action if you have a risk or issue that is scored as "needs action" based on calculated RPN value.

Right now the dashboard for risks is by project - looking for a good way to combine these for my PMO view.  And like Fabio, if there was some way to connect project completion/timelines to risk as well, I'd love to hear it.