All issues are indeed realised risks, however not all realised risks are issues.

An issue describes a negative event/situation that has happened or is happening.

A risk describes something positive or negative that *might* happen in the future – a possible event(s), which deviates from our expected outcome.

Truth is we don’t usually track positive risks in the same way as those which may disrupt our ideal path… we just pray/look forward/try our best to realise them!

Tara

Regardless of known methodologies, how would you handle the types of “issues” you’re speaking about if you were in charge of your organization’s PM office?

currently in my organisation there is a pm methodology in place where they are adamant that issues are realised risks.

firstly, I personally don’t agree with this myself, but secondly i am trying to find information on the internet regarding PMBOK & their take on issues vs risks and there is no clear information anywhere regarding this…

can anyone refer me to specific information so I can explain to the people I am working with why an issue is not always a realised risk

thanks
mt

In Agile environments, one of the things you are trying to minimize is too much upfront work on developing contingencies that have a low probability or detrimental effect. You only want to build contingencies you really need and preferably just-in-time.

Tara – great article; I’m sharing ti with some co-workers!

Cheers!
Paul

Thanks for pointing that out! I’ve amended the intro slightly as my wording was somewhat missleading.

Tara

When contingency plans are in place, trigger identified and monitored, resources available and up to speed, there is no “issue.” It’s (the contingency) just another piece of work (the story defined previously). There is nothing to analyze, nothing unknown, just execution. It’s not an issue.