Has anyone developed and controled a Risk Register within Wrike?

Hi David, this is how I do it:

As you likely know we can get into really deep detail here when it comes to how you want to apply risk management and I'm happy to do that if needed!

However let's start small with how one might capture risks in Wrike's Folder structure for a Project and hopefully, this sets you in the right direction to build your own risk management requirements within Wrike 🙂

Folder structure:

• Let's say you have created a new Campaign Project and you're beginning to add the Tasks.
• For analyzing the risk for a Project, creating a new Folder called Risk Log within your Project is the first step. 
• Now you can begin to Tag 'risky' Tasks in the 'Risk Log' Folder. This way, you have all risky Tasks all in one place, separate to actual Campaign Project. 
• Next, I'd start customizing my Risk Assessment in terms of impact and probability (and any other aspects you want to capture) as Custom Fields. Depending on your register, you could have drop-down options 1 up to 5 for impact and probability etc.
• Now using Table View you have greater visibility over the risk's you've identified - similar to a Risk Register chart.
• You can also use Reports (and Calculated Fields) to add some automation to your 'likely' and 'probability' Custom Fields.

By creating Custom Fields, you can expand the initial assessment, and add revised assessments etc. as needed. There's a lot of flexibility in terms of the data you can capture and the Reporting, Dashboards and general visibility you can see.

What do you think? What approach are you using now?

Great suggestion, Stephen!  I'm going to use this to help us create a similar log.

We have a similar approach for our "Lessons Learned."  I've participated in a lot of lessons learned meetings in the past, and they all get logged into a great void of an Excel sheet that never returns when a new project starts up.  In our project template, I have a lessons learned task at the end of each project.  I use the same method described in this Wrike Tip to run a report on these tasks.  The major lessons we want to carry forward into future projects is logged in a "Notes" custom field so they can be easily read without having to open the tasks.  At the beginning of each project we have a reminder task to review lessons learned.  The other advantage of this is that the lessons are still associated with the project they occurred in.  This helps with predicting potential issues in similar projects.

As I'm writing this, I realize I need a way to separate the different lessons by functional category.  I may try to do this with either a workflow state or different custom fields for logging purposes.  Additionally, I may adjust the workflow of our project kickoff to have a "REVIEW LESSONS LEARNED" state rather than a discrete task for this.  I'm open to thoughts and suggestions here!

Cheers!

That's a super idea, Trevor! It would be great to have a Best Practice post from you outlining your process for others to learn from.

I've heard of teams adding "Project 'X' Learnings" task, which they fill in during the wrap-up meeting following the end of the Project.

Using Custom Fields is a good way to split by category, this will make it easier use Reports, Dashboards, simply to filter these tasks so you can see them in one place at any time.

My advice would be to add an extra Workflow Status and a Custom Field. The Status helps ensure the Project always flows through a review and learnings stage of the Project, so it's not forgotten or missed. The Custom Field helps categorize the learnings by the functional Category as you outlined, making it really easy to pull Reports, create Dashboard widgets, or use filters in Wrike to see these tasks by category.

Also, if a Project crosses many Custom Fields, you might be interested in the new Multi-select Custom Fields now available in the New Table view. Check it out by editing Custom Fields in the New Table in Labs 👍

Thanks, Stephen!  You gave a good suggestion regarding the workflow modification.  I'll draft up an example in my sandbox to share in Best Practices when I have a moment.

Cheers!

We have implemented a FMEA tool in the past to assess risks to project (at least a very simple version.) The basic idea is that you set values for:

1. Risk to customer/Severity of failure 1-10

2. Chances of occurrences 1 - 10

3. Chances of being caught 1 - 10 (1 would be caught every time, 10 no checks in place)

From there we use custom fields and a calculated field to create a sum for these three numbers. We focus on the higher ones. The basic idea is that if something is the worst thing in the world (10 risk) but will never happen (1 occurrence,) it would not be worked on before a moderate risk that happens half the time. 

Thanks, Mike

Hi Michael, it's so good to hear that people are doing this and using Calculated Fields is not something I have applied here so I'm going to look at that later, thank you.

Can I ask, do you run an assessment on every task, or is it at the top level Project?

Hi Mike, we use the same method here, but multiply our severity, occurance, and detection to calculate the RPN.  Either way, it's done through calculated fields which is really helpful!  We have a log in each project for our DFMEA.  Risks are identified in that log and then reviewed at a specific workflow step in the design task.

I'd love to see how your FMEA log is setup.  Here's a snip of the report that's generated for our log:

Hi David, I created a more detailed post that hopefully addresses some of your questions related to this topic.

DFMEA "Risks" Log by Project

Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions related to this.

How can I remove the risk folder from my project gantt chart?

Hi Azhari Mohamed!

If you view the details of the folder and click on the three dots in the right hand corner, you'll be able to delete the folder from there! 😊

Thank you @... for your reply 🙂

When I delete the folder it got deleted from the entire project not from Gantt chart only 😞

Hey Azhari Mohamed, thanks for getting back to me so quickly!

Currently, the only kind of folders you can hide on the Gantt Chart are ones without any tasks/projects in them. It isn't possible to hide folders on the Gantt Chart without deleting them.

I'd recommend making a post suggesting this as a possible feature in the Product Feedback forum! Once the post reaches 60 upvotes, our Product Team will be able to give you an update on the status of that feature!

Hope this helped! If you have any other questions, let me know 😊