Present a Risk Profile – Part 2

It has been a while back that we looked into the series how to present a risk profile to an audience.

The last time we discussed and looked at the standard way of presenting by the two axes likelihood and consequence. This time its about the „Heat Map„, an approach we have learned from Liam Wallace at the IQPC Project Risk Management Conference.

He uses the following picture to express a risk profile.

Its especially capable to show the level of risk in specific areas (eg. Human Resources, Financials etc.). As the two dimensions are „project“ and „area“ it can be used if you are managing a Programme of Work or a Portfolio or you are Manager of a PMO.

The key benefits are that you are able to identify areas of common risk in most of the projects.  For Example you have a financial risk in amber or red in most of your projects and all other areas are more or less green. That would clearly show that you have a common problem in the financial area.

You are also able to do the same on a project level. If one project has higher risks in most of the areas and all other projects show more or less green then there might be something wrong with that particular project.

The People attending the conference had very positive feedback on that chart as it is very powerful because of the reasons mentioned above.