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In John Stenbeck’s book “PMI-ACP and Certified Scrum Professional Exam Prep and Desk Reference”, he creates an “agile project management process grid” which describes 87 processes used in agile project management.   These processes are divided into five process groups (Initiate, Plan, Iterate, Control, and Close), which are analogous to the five process groups in traditional project management, and seven knowledge areas which can be mapped, more or less, onto the ten knowledge areas in traditional project management.

I’m in the midst of discussing a block of three processes that are in the continuous improvement knowledge area that are carried out in the planning phase.   The third of these processes is 7.4 Identify Metrics.   In the last two posts, I discussed

• the dashboard, sometimes known as a stoplight report, and
• three ways of showing progress on a project, the burn-up chart, the velocity chart, and the earned value management chart.  

In this post, I cover the last of the metrics, the risk register.

How is the risk register in agile different than the risk register used in traditional PM?

First of all, the risk is given a qualitative rating, basic, important, or critical, and the risk is assigned a number based on the group’s analysis of the severity of the risk.

Then the critical risks are listed as being top priority, and the group puts next to each risk in that critical category a mitigation plan.   When the critical risks all have mitigation plans, then the team goes on to the next category, the important risks.   Then and only then are the basic risk addressed.

It is a stripped down version of the risk analysis process used in traditional PM which requires a qualitative AND a quantitative analysis of the risks.    For each risk that is being handled in the iteration, it must go from being critical to being important to being basic in severity.   The reason why the risk register is streamed down is because it gives enough comprehensive information to the stakeholders while avoiding unnecessary expenditure of resources on reports with an unnecessary amount of detail.

This concludes the discussion of all the process in the planning process group.   The next process g.roup, Iteration, will begin to be covered in the next post.

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