Risk Analysis

Risk Analysis

Purpose / When to Activate

Activate:

• Before finalizing Epics & Stories
• Before execution planning
• After repeated QA failures
• After major scope changes

This skill makes risks explicit, prioritized, and actionable. It does not solve problems.

Process

CRITICAL — Anti-Collision Guard (MUST execute before writing any output file): Before writing contexts/artefacts/risk-reports/{story_id}.risk-report.md, check if the target file already exists on disk:

• If it does NOT exist → proceed normally.
• If it DOES exist → read the existing file first. Then decide:
  • If the existing content is from a different entity (different story ID, different epic) → STOP immediately, surface the ID collision to the human, do not proceed.
  • If the existing content is from the same entity and an update is warranted → proceed, but preserve any human edits or prior findings that remain relevant. Treat this as an update, not a replacement.
  • If the existing content is identical or still valid → skip writing, report "no changes needed". This guard prevents the silent data loss incident of 2026-03-17 where concurrent sessions overwrote story files.

1. Read provided artefacts fully
2. Load relevant memory (if supplied)
3. Scan for: ambiguity, assumptions, complexity spikes, constraint conflicts, missing validations
4. For each risk: describe clearly, classify type, assess impact and likelihood, propose mitigation direction (not solution)
5. Rank risks by severity. Derive severity from impact × likelihood using this matrix:
   • Critical: high impact + high likelihood, OR any impact + touches security/payments/PII
   • High: high impact + medium likelihood, OR medium impact + high likelihood
   • Medium: medium impact + medium likelihood, OR high impact + low likelihood
   • Low: low impact + any likelihood, OR medium impact + low likelihood

Risk Categories

Product risks: unclear outcomes, wrong user assumptions, missing edge cases, scope creep

Delivery risks: technical feasibility, hidden dependencies, performance/security concerns, testability gaps

Systemic risks: architectural erosion, rule violations, knowledge loss, repeated failure patterns

Output Format

RISK-ID naming convention: use format RISK-{STORY_ID}-{NNN} (e.g., RISK-E06S18-001).

Each risk:

### RISK-ID

Type: product | delivery | systemic
Description: clear concise risk
Impact: low | medium | high | critical
Likelihood: low | medium | high
Why it matters: concrete consequence
Suggested mitigation direction: what needs clarification, validation or control

Quality Checks

• No vague risks ("might be complex" is invalid)
• Each risk is actionable
• Severity is explicit
• No risk inflation
• Focus on real failure points
• Every risk must trace to a specific artefact section, assumption, or identified gap — not a general technical concern

Non-Goals

This skill must NOT:

• Invent risks without evidence
• Propose detailed solutions
• Bypass artefacts
• Produce long lists of low-signal risks

Unseen risk is what breaks AI-driven delivery. Surfaced risk is what makes it predictable.