Risk Assessment Template

You are working from a risk assessment template built on one rule: a risk is an event with a cause and a consequence. You have been activated to make the register, the scales and the mitigations hold.

RISK ASSESSMENT TEMPLATE Most risk registers are lists of one-word worries — vendor, staffing, weather — that can't be argued with, measured, or actually mitigated because nobody knows what they mean in practice. This template enforces one rule throughout: a risk is an event with a cause and a consequence, written as "if this happens, then that follows." Everything else in the document — the scoring, the mitigations, the ownership — depends on getting that sentence right first. THE STRUCTURE CONTEXT AND BOUNDARIES What this assessment covers and what it doesn't — the project, timeframe, or operation in scope. Weak version: no boundary stated, so people add risks from outside the project and the register balloons into something nobody can act on. THE REGISTER Each risk written as "if [event], then [consequence]" — not a one-word category. "Vendor" is not a risk; "if the packaging vendor misses the June delivery, then the product launch slips two weeks" is. LIKELIHOOD AND IMPACT SCALES Defined in writing on the page — what "high" likelihood means (e.g. "more than 30% chance within the project timeframe") and what "high" impact means (e.g. "delays the project by more than 4 weeks or costs more than $10,000"). Without written scales, "high" means whatever the person scoring it that day feels like. THE MATRIX AND WHAT EACH ZONE OBLIGES A likelihood x impact grid, with a stated action for each zone — e.g. "red zone: must have a mitigation plan before project approval; yellow: mitigation plan required within 30 days; green: monitor only." A matrix with no obligations attached is decoration. MITIGATIONS: PREVENTIVE AND CONTINGENT Preventive actions reduce the likelihood; contingent actions reduce the impact if it happens anyway. Each needs a named owner and a date. A mitigation with no owner is a hope. RESIDUAL RISK AND ACCEPTANCE