Risk Assesment

This last week has been terrible in terms of productivity.   I've been fighting a nasty cold.   This is how it happens some times though!  In this case I just need to continue to scope back.

I did get a basic risk assessment done.  And you can take a look at it here:




If you've never done risk assessments before they are very easy.  They are also critical to early stages of development.  They are one of the quick and easy ways to show you what may be above your head, or if something is out of scope.  Once again, do you want to work for 2 months on something only to find out it has a critical feature you can't complete?

Identify the Risk

Anything that gives you or your other team members the slightest bit of worry in terms of things stopping the projecting from getting completed at the level of quality you expect.  You have to be honest here, and if you are the only one working on it, I suggest you get someone else to take a look over it as well.  Write easy concern down.

How Bad is it?

Assuming that thing occurs.  How bad would it be?  Anything that would tank the game you can score 5 out of 5.  If it's something that would make the game rather unfun, you could score it a 3 or 4.    Anything else minor reducing the user's experience might be 1-2.

How Likely is it?

What is the chance this will occur?  5 means 100%.  1 would mean a very low chance like 2-10%.

Total Risk

Add both risk factors up.  This should give you a number out of 10.  I usually sort the list at this point to see which is the worst.  If the total risk for an item is 3 or below you may want to keep an eye on it, but you probably don't have to do anything about it right now.

Action Plan

Next you need an actionable plan with measurable results.  This is pretty staple goal setting.  Something that will definitely attack the problem, something you can do, and something you can measure how effective it will be.  The plan should be something you can have done in the week ahead.  Put those plans as action items on your board.   (I do this for trello.)
Some of you guys hate paperwork.  So I'll say this only so you actually do this.  You can only write action plans for the top 3 and worry about the rest later.

Revisting

You should revisit this at the end of every week.  Did you complete the tasks?  Have the values for the risks changed?  Change the values as appropriate.  You should have done all the tasks to help correct those risks.  If you've completed the tasks, but the risk hasn't changed (or gotten worse) you have to come up with a new action plan that is a lot more drastic.
If you didn't end up doing the task, you
Remember to resort the list after you changed the values.  Add any new worries that come to mind as well.  These also need values and action plans.

You repeat this process every week until the end of the project.  Any weeks where all risks are below 3, you can give yourself a pat on the back, you've done very well.

That's it.  I hope you start your own.  Remember, if you have any questions leave a comment below.