Conduct a Risk Analysis of Your Digital Project

Now that you have all the knowledge you need about your project, you can begin phase two - identifying the risks.

It’s not easy to start identifying the risks from nothing, so let’s look at a method for doing this. 

Apply The 7D Approach

Risk can become a problem and impact the project as a whole. Therefore, you should try to think of types of events that could interfere.

Use this form of analysis whenever you start a new project. It will help ensure that you don’t miss anything obvious and show that you have looked at every possible area in your risk analysis.

We will first look at the fundamentals of the three building blocks of the QCD (quality, cost, delivery) triangle.

Let’s examine it through the eyes of a project manager:

• The project scope (quality/volume).

• The project budget (cost).

• The completion time (delivery).

These are the first three dimensions we will look at using this method. They are probably the most important of the seven dimensions as they have the biggest potential impact on the project.

Dimension 1: The Project Scope

The following questions should help you to detect any project scope risks:

• Has the project scope been outlined in enough detail?

• Does the project represent a significant volume of work?

• Does the project touch on several different sectors and involve creating several things?

Dimension 2: Budget

Ask the following questions to deal with your project’s budget. Depending on the context, you can either outline it in monetary amounts or the number of workdays per person. The currency may vary, but the questions you should ask will stay the same:

• Has the budget been clearly defined?

• Does the budget consider the project management costs?

• Does the budget line up with the identified costs?

• Has the budget been approved?

Dimension 3: Time

The following questions will help you to identify the risks related to time:

• Have temporary time frames been put together (even if they don’t go into much detail)?

• Are there any deadlines that can’t be changed?

• Do the time frames make sense considering the scope of the project?

• Does the time include any dates when the team won’t be able to work on the project? 

In addition to these three aspects, there are two people-related ones to consider:

Dimension 4: The Team

Let’s identify any project team-related risks (both the client and agency team).

The following questions focus on the entire project team:

• Does the team have the necessary skills to complete the project?

• Do we have these skills in-house, or are we also relying on subcontractors?

• Are the people needed to complete the project available?

• Does the client team have the skills to guide the project?

• Has the client made staff available to monitor the project?  

Dimension 5: Decision-Making

Another crucial point is decision-making and if the project can move forward without issues to get the various approvals.

Here are some standard questions to analyze decision-making:

• Has a decision-making structure been established?

• Will the decision-makers be available for the duration of the project?

• Have the decision-makers been identified?

• Who is responsible for the different decisions? 

• Does the chain of approval involve several people?

Dimension 6: Complexity

Finally, you must consider two aspects that are specific to digital projects.

The complexity of the end product is the first. The more complicated a project, the more parameters you must consider and the higher the chance of making a mistake.

Also, consider the originality of the concept. For example, if the project is innovative (with unique features/technologies), you may not be able to rely on prior experience and outside support.

Here are a few questions you ask regarding complexity:

• Does the project have complicated security issues?

• Will the end product interact with one or several external systems?

• Have the production teams planned a high level of complexity for one/several aspects of the project regarding customer journey/links?

• Have the production teams planned a high level of complexity for one/several aspects of the project regarding the technologies?

• Do you have control over the environment where you will deliver the end product?  

Dimension 7: Level of Innovation

The last set of questions in the 7D approach focus on the level of project innovation:

• Have you been involved in a project with a similar end product?

• Have you identified any similar, pre-existing products?

• Is there any information on the technologies you must use?

• Does the project involve creating innovative features?

• Will you need to create innovative interfaces?

• Have you done a feasibility study? 

However, by using these questions and remembering the Pareto principle, you will probably have identified most of the issues.

I have included extra information in this table to help you ask more precise questions. If the answer (yes/no) to the question is in red, then you should be aware that this may be a risk that you need to identify.

Identify Specific Risks

Every project has unique aspects. Therefore, a standard table of questions will not be enough to cover everything. Instead, consider all the project’s unique characteristics when adding new questions to your list.

In the previous chapter, I presented several methods for describing a project. If you used them, you should have collected certain information that will help you detect specific risks.

Consider the specific risks as coming from inside the project (internal) or from around the project (external). The question word and SWOT methods can help you to identify them.

Execute a Postmortem Meeting

It is best to involve the entire project team when identifying risks. Then, you can set up a postmortem team meeting.

Set up a feedback session at the end of a project. It will help you learn and improve for future projects. Consider doing the same type of meeting at the start of a project.

The idea is that you would send the project description to the team beforehand so that they have time to look at it. Then ask the group to imagine you're in the future and that the worst has happened:

"This has been the worst project we've ever been involved with! An epic failure! How can we learn from this and make sure it doesn't happen again?"

You then ask the participants to brainstorm the reasons why the project failed. It's an excellent method for identifying risks that you would never have thought of alone. These sessions usually are very productive. 🙂

Describe a Risk

Before you can evaluate the potential impact of a risk on your project, you will have to outline it in more detail to be clear. Let's see how to describe the risks you have identified. It can take the shape of a chain, linking the causes to the effects.

The Origin

Provide more information about the situation in a specific context. Doing this suggests that you can improve and learn from this issue during the project. You may also put steps in place to deal with this issue.

The Trigger

Identify the event or specific conditions (it could be a collection of circumstances) that would see this risk become a problem.

The Consequences

Outline the potential problem's impact on the project linked to the risk.

Here's a table to describe the identified risks:

You will not always have to describe risks so formally. However, knowing their characteristics will help you identify their potential impact and find solutions to reduce them. We will be discussing such actions in the last part of this course.

Let’s Recap!

• You can detect the majority of risks by looking at the seven generic dimensions: scope, budget, time, team, decision-making, complexity, and innovation.

• A project may also involve certain specific (unique) risks; your project description methods will help you to detect these.

• A project does not necessarily have any specific risks.

• An antemortem meeting with the whole project team is a great way to detect risks.

• To describe a risk, outline its origin, the possible trigger, and the potential impact on the project. 

You have now learned to describe the risks of this project, which should help you rank them. That’s worked out well, as we’ll be looking at this in the next chapter!