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| Risk
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Risk Fields An essential aspect of project management is to identify and manage the inherent risks of a project. A risk is any probable event or condition that can have a potentially negative outcome on the project in the future. A risk work item documents and tracks the technical or organizational risks of a project. When concrete action is required, these risks may translate into tasks to be performed to mitigate the risk. For example, a technical risk can set off an architectural prototyping effort. The team should always regard risk identification in a positive way to ensure contribution of as much information as possible about the risks it faces. The environment should be such that individuals identifying risks can do so without fear of retribution for honest expression of tentative or controversial views. Teams creating a positive risk management environment will be more successful at identifying and addressing risks earlier than those teams operating in a negative risk environment.
Field | Description
--- | ---
Title | Required. The title provides a concise overview of the risk that may occur. The title should be descriptive enough to allow the team to understand what the potential risk is.
File Attachments | Attach related files providing additional documentation around the risk.
Issue | Issue is a Yes or No value indicating if the risk is blocked in some manner. If this field is set to Yes, the task displays on the project manager's issue report.
Exit Criteria | The exit criteria field indicates if the risk is critical to starting or finishing an iteration. If the exit criteria field is set to Yes, the risk displays in the project manager's project checklist.
Description | This field provides a description of the risk, any project exposure, and potential mitigations.
Area | The area is used to group the risk into an appropriate feature or team area. The area must be a valid node in the project hierarchy.
Assigned To | The current person that the risk is assigned to. Generally, it is a project manager or an architect but may be any of the project team members.
Impact | The impact is an estimate of the severity (Low, Medium, High, or Critical) of adverse effects, magnitude of loss, or the potential opportunity cost should the risk be realized within the project.
Reason | The reason a risk is in the current state. For example, a risk can be in the Closed state because it was Avoided.
State | Required. A risk can be in the Active or Closed states.
Iteration | The iteration in which the risk could be realized.
Priority | The priority describes the importance of a risk in relation to other risks and is useful for prioritizing which risks to mitigate.
Links | Links to related work items, hyperlinks, changesets, or source code files.
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