Manage project risks effectively with Jira
Every project is subject to risks during its implementation. These include all events that either have a negative impact on the course of a project or events that jeopardize the set project goals. Such risks change both the time and budget and/or quality specifications. Overall, a distinction is made between various sources of project risks, which are briefly presented here. Business risks include a shortage or non-availability of skills and resources within the project team. This leads to delays or poor quality implementation. At the same time, financial bottlenecks or budget cuts may well occur during the ongoing project.
In addition to entrepreneurial risks, there are other risks. These include economic risks, such as high competitive pressure or a sudden loss of important customers. Technical risks can also become problematic. Such risks include the failure of technically necessary systems or a disruption to the logistics chain that impairs the company’s own production process. There are often legal problems that cannot be avoided, even with the utmost care, and that cost money and time. There are also external risks. The project participants have no influence over these factors and can be summarized under “force majeure”. These include storms, unexpected political developments or media attacks.
It is a management task of the project manager to identify, analyze and monitor such project risks. The aim is to respond as effectively as possible to the risks that arise. For effective risk management, it is necessary to set overarching objectives and define strategies and the political approach. This primarily involves defining criteria that can be used to classify and assess risks. At the same time, the methods of risk identification and assessment need to be clearly defined. It is also necessary to determine the responsibilities for risk decisions, to provide all resources for averting risks, to ensure holistic communication regarding the identified risks and to sensitize all project participants to risk management.
Ein wirksames Projektmanagement, zu dem auch die Bewertung von Risiken gehört, ist für den Erfolg eines jeden Projekts unerlässlich. Leider investieren die leitenden Projektmanager nur einen geringen Prozentsatz – Studien zufolge etwa 9 Prozent – der Sitzungszeit in den Umgang mit potenziellen Projektrisiken. Obwohl viele Aspekte den Erfolg eines Projekts beeinflussen und der Grund für ein Scheitern sein können, sind die Umstände und Ereignisse, die ein Projekt gefährden können, besonders relevant. Auch bereits aufgetretene, aber nicht behobene Probleme können zum Scheitern eines Projekts führen.
Die folgenden Gründe verdeutlichen, warum ein effektives Management von störenden Umständen und Ereignissen oder Problemen für den Erfolg eines Projekts entscheidend ist:
● Proactive identification and resolution – when a project team addresses risks and issues early on, it helps to prevent escalation and helps to ensure that the success of the project is not jeopardized.
● Improving decision-making – structured risk and issue management creates a valid information base so that decision-making is improved. At the same time, it enables effective resource allocation.
● Optimized communication with all stakeholders – addressing potential problems or risks in a transparent and timely manner ensures that the trust of the stakeholders involved is maintained and helps to manage existing expectations.
● Efficient allocation of available resources – identifying risks and issues helps to allocate resources efficiently. In this way, wasted efforts are completely avoided.
● Permanent monitoring and adaptation – the continuous emergence of risks and problems enables a timely response to challenges. This makes a significant contribution to ensuring that the success of the project is not jeopardized.
The factors mentioned above impressively illustrate why functioning risk and problem management is immensely important for the success of a project. The strategic use of Jira can make a world of difference here.
Jira is a solid platform that is particularly suitable for agile projects – such as SCRUM and Kanban – with various functions that support project managers in mapping and subsequently mitigating potential problems. There are several plugins for Jira that can be used to optimize risk management and increase the effectiveness of risk management in projects. Such templates provide various frameworks for project risk management, making it easier to establish industry standards such as ISO 31000, PRINCE 2, ISO 27100 and ISO 14971. These templates optimize the risk assessment process by focusing on individual project needs. The advanced reports and overview pages from Jira Cloud enable the monitoring of risk management performance. Customizable notifications ensure that the relevant stakeholders are informed of any new or changing risk.
Advantages of risk management with Jira
It is a common misconception that risk management delays innovation and instead only increases bureaucracy. However, in reality, effective risk management is at the heart of sustainable growth and resilience. This is especially true for highly regulated industries such as medical technology, finance and space technology. The following reasons show why risk management should be transformed into a powerhouse of opportunity with Jira:
1. Accelerated product development
In medical technology, automated risk management with Jira can optimize the process of identifying and mitigating product risks. As a result, safety is given a higher status in product development right from the start. This proactive approach not only accelerates the development of the product through to market maturity, but also reduces the costs for product adjustments after market launch.
2. Promoting innovation within legal compliance
Young companies in the financial technology sector, in particular, have to deal with the dual challenge of innovation and legal compliance right from the start. Risk management with Jira ensures compliance of data and systems with the ISO/IEC 27001 standard. This security backbone enables financial technology companies to break new ground boldly.
3. Navigating the jungle of medical device regulation
The complexity of achieving compliance in highly regulated industries can be daunting. Performing risk management using Jira, along with the commercial company wiki Confluence, provides a structured but flexible framework for document management. This ensures that everything – from design and product manufacture to maintenance and training, is compliant.
4. Rule-compliant implementation of critical software developments
For software products that are built into safety-critical applications, risk management in Jira facilitates the global approach to compliance. These will address standards across regions and industries. This ensures that products are not only secure, but also market-ready – regardless of geographical boundaries.
The risk manager implemented in Jira enables project teams to identify and assess existing hazards and risks throughout the product lifecycle. Risks, including their probability of occurrence, expected impact and conceivable strategies for optimization or risk mitigation, are identified and help project teams to minimize damage. In Jira, risk data can be centralized and a proactive decision-making process regarding risk management can be initiated.
Digitize risk management with Jira
By establishing digital risk management with the help of Jira, project risks can be identified and relevant project information can be stored centrally. In addition, project participants can see the current status quo and progress in terms of risk mitigation at any time. This makes it possible to find out to what extent existing risks have been mitigated or even completely eliminated and when exactly they occurred. Digital risk management makes it possible for all affected stakeholders to receive regular information. Automatic notifications are even possible with the appropriate default settings. All responsibilities, as well as all project tasks, infrastructures, teams and departments affected by a risk, can be set up in the system.
Digitize risk management with Jira
Especially as digital risk management via Jira offers the possibility of establishing information details for risks, this increases clarity for the majority of potential risks. At the same time, the clarity of the risks is increased – which is particularly important for many risks – and the user-friendliness of processing the risks is enhanced. For example, digital risk management in Jira can be used to integrate a comment function and fields for specific information queries. The status of a risk is also recorded. At the same time, the process steps of a risk are recorded. In addition, the right parties can always be notified of a risk update.
If Jira is intended as a tool for digital risk management, all process steps should be planned in detail. This also includes the clarification of detailed questions – such as the definition of process steps – and the possible integration of so-called specially configured fields. The respective standards that a process must pass through should always be defined. In order to fully map digital risk management via Jira, the internal way of working should also be taken into account, as fields may be necessary here.
In addition to mapping the process steps, the user groups, task types and objects and the area of application to which digital risk management is applied should be defined.
