***Want more project management tips from author Chris Cairns? Join us at the Leading Great Projects session next Tuesday, 9/10 at our GovLoop Virtual Innovators Summit – free rsvp****
Nearly every government project needs to employ risk management processes and practices to ensure successful delivery. A Risk Register (or Risk Log) is one of the project manager’s key tools for managing risk throughout the lifecycle of a project. It acts as a central repository for all identified risks and includes attributes such as risk description, risk probability, risk impact, risk owner, etc.
A Risk Register is important enough that every project-driven organization should adopt a standard template that project managers can immediately use to start managing risks. Ideally, this template would embed organizational and industry standards, best practices and lessons learned to the greatest extent possible. It should also be user-friendly.
That’s why GovLoop asked me to design and develop a Risk Register Template for the GovLoop community. Over the past month, I’ve researched various sources and drawn from my own experience to come up with an Excel-based Risk Register, which aligns with PMI’s six risk management processes, that you can confidently reuse on your new or existing project.
Based on your feedback and additional ideas that I have, I will continue to improve the Risk Register template.
With that, here’s the GovLoop Risk Register Template.
What other types of templates would you like to see GovLoop develop?
***Want more project management tips from author Chris Cairns? Join us at the Leading Great Projects session next Tuesday, 9/10 at our GovLoop Virtual Innovators Summit – free rsvp****
Just a simple project management template would be good for a small project that will take little time and resources…
Great suggestion, Marilyn. A lot of times big PM templates are applied to smaller sized projects, which is really just overkill.
With the funding risks of today, this is certainly becoming a very important area in Gov PM.
@Eric: great point. Certainly is.
Good point Marilyn – small projects still need PM but often either get ignored or overkilled w/ processes
Great template, Chris. Thank you for making it for us (all of us!).
@Marilyn – We have some templates for small projects here:
https://www.govloop.com/page/government-project-management
Thanks for posting that. We should all be sharing practical artifacts.
Hi Chris, I just wanted to say thank you for this tool. I bookmarked it back when this was published, and forgot all about it. Now I have a new project where I need to evaluate risk and changes in risk, and I’m borrowing heavily from your example.