| name | risk-management |
| description | Use when identifying project risks, creating risk registers, building mitigation plans, or assessing impact and likelihood of threats to delivery |
Risk Management
Overview
Structured risk assessment that produces a risk register with dual scoring (inherent and residual) and actionable mitigation plans. Uses a 5x5 likelihood-impact matrix aligned with ISO 31000:2018 principles.
The risk register template contains the full document structure with all scales, tables, diagrams, and guidance on what to adapt per project. This skill describes when and how to use it.
Announce at start: "I'm using the risk-management skill to create a risk register and mitigation plan."
When Not to Use
- Incident postmortems (use a postmortem template instead)
- Security-only threat modeling that doesn't need a project-level register
- Informal risk brainstorming without intent to track and mitigate
Workflow
1. Define Scope and Audience
Before identifying risks, establish:
- What system or project boundary are we assessing?
- What are the key deliverables, dependencies, and deadlines?
- Who is the audience? (engineering team, leadership, auditors, external stakeholders)
- Is this a discovery-phase assessment or an update to an existing register?
2. Discover Output Location
Use the plan location discovery process to find the right directory. Default filename: risk-register-and-mitigation-plan.md.
Announce the chosen path and wait for user confirmation before writing.
3. Copy and Adapt the Template
Start from the risk register template. Adapt it to the project:
- Purpose and Scope (section 1): Fill in the project boundary, audience, and phase context.
- Impact scale (section 3): Rewrite impact definitions for the project domain. The template defaults are for infrastructure/protocol projects.
- Risk appetite (section 4): Set maximum acceptable residual severity per category based on the project's risk tolerance.
- Risk taxonomy (section 5): Add, remove, or rename categories to match the domain. The defaults (SEC, OPS, PRO, GOV) work for most technical projects.
- Roles (section 8): Map roles to actual people or teams.
- Review cadence (section 9): Adjust frequencies for the project phase and team size.
4. Identify and Score Risks
For each risk:
- Assign a category and sequential ID (e.g.,
R-SEC-001)
- Describe what could go wrong, clearly and specifically
- Score inherent risk (Likelihood x Impact, before controls)
- Document existing controls and planned mitigation
- Score residual risk (Likelihood x Impact, after planned controls)
The gap between inherent and residual makes mitigation effectiveness visible and auditable.
5. Write Detailed Mitigation Plans
For every risk with an inherent score of 12 or above (High/Critical), write a detailed mitigation plan using the template format in section 7. Organize controls by type:
- Preventive: stops the risk from materializing
- Detective: detects that a risk event has occurred
- Corrective: limits damage and restores operation
Medium and lower risks are tracked in the register with mitigation strategies noted inline.
6. Review with Stakeholders
Present the completed register for review. Check that:
- No High/Critical risk is missing a detailed mitigation plan
- Every mitigation has an owner assigned
- Risk appetite thresholds are not exceeded by residual scores
- Impact definitions match the project domain (not left as generic defaults)
Common Mistakes
- Describing risks too vaguely ("something might go wrong with the API")
- Skipping residual scoring, making it impossible to measure mitigation effectiveness
- Not assigning owners, making mitigation nobody's responsibility
- Rating everything as High/Critical, which dilutes focus
- Writing mitigation plans for low-severity risks instead of accepting them with documented rationale
- Forgetting to adapt impact definitions to the project domain
