I would like the ability to track risks and issues associated to a project. Currently, if there is a Risk or Issue, I find the project task or milestone most closely associated to that Risk or Issue, then I use a custom filter to flag that task, and then write out what the Risk or Issue is in the task/milestone description.
I would love a new Tab at the top of the project called “Risks and Issues” where I could track the ongoing status of open risks or issues, and then mark which milestones or tasks are related to those Risks and Issues. If I could drag the Risks and Issues into the Progress Update, that would be great as well!
I replied via the Email and it does not look like any of my text was captured. Repeated below–>
Hi Marie,
Happy to help!
Risks may present a problem for our schedule, scope, or budget down the line, but they are not yet impacting the project. The project team tries to mitigate a risk so it does not impact the project.
An issue has already materialized and is causing problems for the project scope, schedule, or budget.
Please see official PMI explanation here for more details on Risks vs Issues
In my project, I currently use a Custom Field to note if a Risk or Issue is impacting a task or milestone. Ex:
Then, I define the Risk in the Task Description
And, every week when I sent out Progress report for the project… I update an Issue/Risks section in the Progress Report. Here, I find and copy all the updated Risks/Issues from the project into the Progress report
This is very time consuming for a real project, when there could be 1-15+ risks/issues we are tracking and that are changing from day to day! (depending on project size). It would be great if there could be a way to drop in Issues/Risks into the status update in a similar way we can do this for Upcoming/Completed tasks.
Please let me know if you have additional questions!
@Elisa_Elkind, thank you SO much for taking the time to share these additional info with us, it is extremely useful! I don’t believe this is in our near-term plans, but it is definitely something we will take onboard for future updates. I’ll make sure to keep you posted here when I have some additional info!
Hi Marie! I support this feature request - having “issues” as an available object within Asana would definitely improve our teams’ adoption. Using the “task” format for this type of project component is leading to a number of questions about dependency and timing - versus more clearly capturing the need for a “decision” or a resolution - not work to be done. Thanks!
I’m evaluating Asana now, and I’m stunned to find that it does not feature a risk register. I’m even more stunned to see the responses by Asana staff above! It is a project management application, and projects are all about managing risk.
The simplest principle is this:-
A risk is an event that has a probability of happening. An opportunity is a risk that has a positive effect. You can record in the same way as a risk. A problem is a risk that has a probability of 1 (100%).
An impact is the effect that the risk will have on our project. It affects project time, cost, and scope to varying degrees.
Risks may need to generate a task.
(Issues are just risks that have been badly defined. They were introduced in PRINCE methodology in the early days…
…but I could talk about this subject for 2 days non-stop, so that’s enough for now.)
The implementation in something like Asana is not difficult:
Call up a risk form (probably from a task or milestone form).
State the risk event with its probability “there is a high probability that XYZ will happen…”
State the impact with its severity “… ZYX will then be blah blah, causing a major increase in the workload, a minor delay to the schedule and medium increase in the budget”. (Those are the 3 project constraints and a clever system would include some data for analysis). Now the PM can do some thinking about it.
Link it to the relevant milestone or task that will be affected.
State the recommended response (ignore, avoid, mitigate, enhance, etc…).
State the action (create a new task and assign it).
