Disclaimer - This is just how we did it. Does not mean its right! I will write a separate blog to let you guys know how this Risk Radar is working for us.
A bit of a preface:
At the start of this week our Delivery Manager (DM) sent us an email and announced that we need a Risk Radar for our team. He had done his research on Google and decided the general image that he wanted to go with (or rather choose the first image that came up for Risk Radar on Google). He also setup a meeting with the team to discuss this further.
A few questions that were raised and how did we deal with them:
Why do we need a Risk Radar?
As a team why did we need a Risk Radar? We already had a Kanban board to show what the team was doing. So what risks would the Risk Radar show? After our brief meeting we decided on a few risks that would affect out team. And this was the first time we were making it verbal and putting it on the Risk Radar, so something would have to be done about it. We had to make sure that we mitigate the risk.
Who was it for?
So did we need a Risk Radar to show us the risks that "WE" came up with? Or was this Radar more for someone outside the team to have a look at and instantly know what were the risks that we as a team faced.
The answer to that was, the Risk Radar was for everyone. It was for the team to know what Risks they would face and then find ways to mitigate them and get them to a point where they no longer are a risk. Anyone outside the team, the Radar would give a high level view of the Risks that the team had. Making it visible to the others (outside the team) would mean that we are keeping it transparent and also allowing a discussion (and a potential solution) to solve or address the risk.
What does it show?
So once we decided who is the risk radar for, now we wanted to know what would be shown on the Risk radar. There are quite a few different ways in which you can name and use your risk radar axis and quadrants.
The method we implemented to come up with our quadrants and axis was "good old discussion". Our DM had made up his mind that he wanted the risk radar to show Probability and Impact of the risk. After our initial discussions we decided to add the Time factor in as well. So the Risk Radar would show what risk we had, what impact did it have on our team and the probability that the risk would happen. It would also show the time frame for the risk. We settles on having a "4 week", "8 week" and "8 week and beyond"time frames which can be seen in our final Risk Radar diagram below.
Now we wanted to decide what the quadrants meant. And what the Axis would represent. A few options for the quadrants where:
Technical and non technical
Outside team and within team
Making a decision for this was a bit tricky, we had to come up with something that could classify all the risks that we put up on the radar. So we came up with a few risks that we faced as a team and then tried classifying them into the right quadrants. After analyzing a few risks we figured out that the Outside team and within team options for the quadrants fir perfectly well. The Axis was fixed to Origin and Mitigation. So our quadrants now look something like this:
First Quadrant: Risk originated outside the team, which needs to be mitigated by the team
Second Quadrant: Risk originated within the team, which will be mitigated within the team
Third Quadrant: Risk originated outside the team , which will be mitigated externally
Fourth Quadrant: Risk originated within the team, but will be mitigated externally.
Visualization:
Our team is very pro-visualization. So our next point for discussion was how do we visually show the probability and the impact. A few ideas that were tossed were:
- Coloured post-it's
- Different coloured dots to represent impact on coloured post-it's
- Different shapes of post-it's to show impact combined with different colours
- Coloured post-it and different sizes
So our current Risk Radar looks something like this:
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| Risk Radar |
This is work in progress, we will see how this suits us. I will write a separate post if we make any changes.
