11.2 Identify Risks

Find and write down anything that could help or hurt the project.

Planning / Risk · ← PMBOK reference · See it on the map

Why it matters

A risk nobody wrote down cannot be planned for, and the first time anyone reacts to it is after it has already happened.

What done looks like

Identified risks are logged in the risk register with enough detail to assess later.

First time tip

Ask the team for risks individually before a group session. People often raise a genuine concern alone that they would hold back from voicing in a group.

What you need (Inputs)

• Risk Management Plan
• Scope Baseline
  How Scrum/Kanban projects satisfy this — counted from: committed backlog items and definition-of-done items (models/agile.py) — a committed backlog (status ready/in_progress/done) plus a written definition of done is what an agile team baselines scope against
• Schedule Baseline
  How Scrum/Kanban projects satisfy this — counted from: the current sprint's committed window (driftless/models/delivery.py:Sprint) for an agile project, or the department's own recurring work (driftless/models/operations.py:RecurringWork) for an operations-cadence one — an agile team's schedule is the sprint it has committed to, not a fixed baseline; an operations-cadence project's schedule is the cadence the department already runs
• Cost Baseline
• Assumption Log
• Stakeholder Register
• Enterprise Environmental Factors

How you do it (Tools & Techniques)

• Expert Judgment
• Data Gathering
• Data Analysis
• Interpersonal and Team Skills
• Prompt Lists
• Meetings

What you get (Outputs)

• Risk Register
• Risk Report
• Assumption Log

Worked example

The committee asks each volunteer privately what worries them, then meets to pool the answers. The list includes a thunderstorm on the day, the headline act cancelling, the portable toilets arriving late, and one nobody had said out loud in a group — that the only person who knows the electrical setup is away the week before.

Common pitfalls

• Running only a group session, so the concern that makes someone look unprepared never gets raised.
• Logging a risk as a single word like "weather", which is too vague to plan a response against later.
• Stopping at the obvious risks and never adding to the list as the date gets closer.

How driftless helps

• Meetings can be run here.
• Risk Register can be created in the wizard.
• Assumption Log can be created in the wizard.