What do you do if your Agile project is facing significant risk management challenges?

1 Use a risk backlog

A risk backlog is a list of potential or existing risks that affect your project, along with their impact, probability, and response strategies. You can create and maintain a risk backlog as part of your product backlog, or as a separate artifact. A risk backlog helps you to keep track of the risks that need to be addressed, and to prioritize them according to their urgency and importance. You can use a risk matrix or a risk burndown chart to visualize and communicate the risk status and trends.

3 Adapt to changes

Agile projects embrace change as an opportunity to deliver value and meet customer needs. However, change also introduces new or increased risks that may affect your project scope, schedule, quality, or budget. You need to be able to adapt to changes and adjust your risk management accordingly. You can use techniques such as rolling wave planning, iterative and incremental delivery, or feedback loops to cope with change and uncertainty. You can also use tools such as risk reviews, risk audits, or risk logs to monitor and control the changes and their impact on your project.

4 Learn from risks

Agile projects are based on learning and improvement. Risk management is not only about preventing or reducing negative outcomes, but also about exploiting or enhancing positive outcomes. You need to learn from risks and use them as opportunities to improve your project performance and customer satisfaction. You can use techniques such as risk experiments, risk metrics, or risk retrospectives to learn from risks and their outcomes. You can also use tools such as risk reports, risk lessons learned, or risk stories to capture and share the knowledge and experience gained from risks.

5 Balance risk and value

Agile projects aim to deliver value to customers and stakeholders. Risk management is not an end in itself, but a means to achieve value. You need to balance risk and value in your project decisions and actions. You can use techniques such as value-driven prioritization, value-based delivery, or value stream mapping to align your risk management with your value proposition. You can also use tools such as value-risk matrix, value-risk curve, or value-risk scorecard to measure and optimize the value-risk trade-off in your project.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?