vignesh2027 Overview
Risk not identified is risk not managed. This skill makes technical and delivery risk explicit so it can be mitigated, accepted, or escalated — before it surprises you.
When to Use
- Before estimating a project
- Before starting a large migration or refactor
- Before a major deployment
- When a project has been "almost done" for two weeks
Process
Step 1: List all risks
Brainstorm: what could go wrong? Include: technical unknowns, external dependencies, team knowledge gaps, deadline pressure, infrastructure, security, data integrity.
Step 2: Score each risk
For each risk: Likelihood (1–3) × Impact (1–3) = Risk Score (1–9). Prioritize scores ≥ 6.
Step 3: Classify risks
- Known known: You know about it and understand it. Mitigate.
- Known unknown: You know there's something you don't know. Research it.
- Unknown unknown: You don't know what you don't know. Add buffer and run pre-mortems.
Step 4: Design mitigations
For each high-score risk: what is the mitigation? What is the fallback? Who owns it?
Step 5: Pre-mortem
Imagine it's 3 months from now and the project failed. What went wrong? Work backwards. This surfaces unknown unknowns.
Step 6: Define go/no-go criteria
For the deployment or launch: what conditions must be true to proceed? What conditions force a delay?
Verification Requirements
- All risks identified and scored
- High-score risks have documented mitigations
- Pre-mortem conducted
- Go/no-go criteria defined
- Risk log tracked throughout the project