Where are the Risk, Issues and Decisions Logs

This is very interesting idea Kris. I'd love to hear the type of information and format you'd like to see this in and a use-case would really help our Product Team understand what these features might look like.

Thanks for posting and welcome to the Community 🙌

I've been experimenting with making sub-folders within projects for each of these logs. That way, each risk/issue/decision/lesson learned/whatever you want to log can be a task within that folder. When the issue is resolved, risk is past or realized, lesson learned actions implemented, decision made, etc. you can mark as complete, but still have the record in the log.

That's an inventive way to track this detail Gregg. Thank you for sharing 👌

Thanks Gregg, I had tried that option too.

Risk Logs usually have a methodology built in around them which provides a 'score' e.g. impact of the risk should it happen x which parts of the organisation would be impacted x likelihood of it happening, which then provides a score or status so that you know which risks are the worst.  And then you have a 'mitigation' field to say what can be done to mitigate the risk.  Then if the risk happens, it can be upgraded status to an Issue.

Taking it further - its great to have that per project - but if you are running a programme (i.e. several interlinking separate projects under one programme manager), then its useful to be able to see all of the risks to the organisation from all projects in one view.

I hope that explains the concept a bit better :-)

@Kris,

Agreed that the use of a task in a folder isn't an ideal implementation of a risk log. You can capture all of those fields in the description, or in custom fields. You could create a custom field that is a checkbox for "Risk" or similar, then be able to create a dashboard for all tasks that are checked as a "Risk". That might give you the comprehensive view you're looking for in program management?

Moving realized risks to issues could be done a variety of ways. Either make a new issue, linking back to the realized risk, or move the risk into the issue folder, or change workflow states in a custom workflow, etc.

None of these are without drawbacks, just ways of using the tool that we have available.

I would also like a more formalized location within projects where we could record decisions. Currently there is no centralized "official" place for decision, however I have been using the description area of a project to record them. Are there plans to build something more formal? Issue/Risk logs would also be great.

@Shane Hi! Is there a standard set of decisions that are taken on projects or does each project have a unique set of decisions that could be made?

@Stephanie It really depends on the project. Some will share common decisions, and others will have unique decisions.

Logs for the 'usual' things Project Managers need like Risks, Issues, Decisions would be fab, I appreciate that there are workarounds now, but maybe in the future you could add them in as this is something dealt with on a daily basis.

The ability to sort them by project, or across the organisation if you have several different projects running would also be fabulous.

Hi all, thanks so much for the use-cases, it's an interesting new idea and we'll make sure the Product Team is made aware of this post.

Make sure you vote on the original post too so we can gauge how popular the request is 🖖

Hi all. I'd also love to see this functionality within Wrike.

The workarounds are creative and may help in the short term, but there is a limitation in terms of the number of workflows that can be applied to tasks and is not a sustainable solution in the long term.

As I think about how to use Wrike instead of a Google Sheet for my Issues Log, I envision an Issues Log folder within the project. Here are the (column) items I'd like to bring over and incorporate:

• (Topic) Category
• Date opened
• Issue/Question
• Issue status (Open, closed...)
• Issue priority
• Identified by
• Owner
• Person responsible for action
• Due Date
• Comments/Resolution

@Dean I agree.

Issues in PM speak tend to be risks that have actually happened, so if you had a Risk Log with all of the above (which provides a 'score' e.g. impact of the risk should it happen x which parts of the organisation would be impacted x likelihood of it happening, which then provides a score or status so that you know which risks are the worst.  And then you have a 'mitigation' field to say what can be done to mitigate the risk.  Then if the risk happens, it can be upgraded status to an Issue.)  You could state as the user if the risk (or later an issue if it is realised) will affect the 'tolerance of the Project i.e. Scope, Budget or Timescale.  That would be really useful.

Similarly a Decsions Log as @Shane suggested, because there are points within all Projects where a decision has to be made, and the results of some of these decisions will impact on how successful (or not) the Project outcome is.  When evaluating the Project at the end, and looking for Lessons Learned, sometimes all problems can emanate from one decision made (usually made on valid grounds, but without cognisance for other things that could potentially be affected or impact the project).  So not for 'blame' but for learning and improvement processes, and of course covering yourself as the Project Manager, it's unlikely for the PM to have made the decision of that level its likely to be at Project Board level :-)

Those are things that really help manage a Project and document the things that could need more monitoring or could go wrong, so most Project Managers would use them daily and other people running project would probably find them really useful too.

I agree that a good way of tracking risks, issues, decisions, etc is highly needed. It brings a new level of transparency, especially when reporting through a portfolio. The workaround is a good temporary fix but there should absolutely be a long term feature included around this subject. It is pretty standard to showcase risks and issues in project management.

SO query, has anything been done for this? I am currently setting up our system and structure and find it unusual to have no issue and risk process log / system

Any further update on this, maybe on another thread? RAID Logs are pretty standard withing Project Management so i'm a little surprised that the work around is just to create tasks to manage it. 

Hi everyone, thanks a lot for your input here!

The team are not planning to add this currently; I'll keep you updated if this changes.

In the meanwhile, using tasks for this seems like an option for sure. I'd recommend creating some Blueprint projects/tasks and then launch them from those blueprints so that you don't have to create similar tasks all the time. Here's more info on Blueprints: https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/articles/360013445394-Blueprints

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Hi folks, 

This is how I have been handling the lack of a true Risk Register so far: 

I created a Folder in Blueprints, then created a few custom fields (Risk Category [dropdown of applicable categories], Risk Type [positive/negative], Risk Probability [dropdown 1-5], Risk Impact [dropdown 1-5], Risk Response [dropdown of accept/avoid/mitigate...etc.]) and have managed project risks by deploying the folder into the applicable project. We also have a org-wide risk register folder that I have been tracking more of the "global" risks to our programs or risks that would be larger impacts than to just one project. 

Hi Sarah Dungey, thank you for the sample! 

It has been quite a while since this is raised. without log /status tracking,it appears that Wrike is not ready to be THE Project Management platform..

Hi Joseph Lew, welcome to the forums! 🙂

There is some functionality released that should be helpful here:

1) Project Risk Report - it's a feature based on the company’s proprietary machine learning technology. Wrike AI will analyze all active projects that you are the owner of and predict how likely each project is to be completed on time. You’ll receive a weekly Project Risk Report email with the risk assessments based on the results of Wrike’s automated prediction. 

2) AI Project Risk Prediction - it monitors your projects for any risks that may cause you to miss your deadlines, then assigns a risk level (low, medium, or high). You can find these estimations in the Project Progress window in the project info panel, Table view, the project dashboard widget, and project-based reports.

Hope this helps! 

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Hello again, everyone! We've just published some tips on how you can set up RAID logs in Wrike - please check it out here and let me know what you think 🤗

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover