In Fluid, risk management is encapsulated under the concept of impacts. These impacts represent anything that can affect a project, encompassing a wide range of factors beyond traditional risks. This comprehensive approach includes changes, risks, issues, dependencies, variations, relationships, and lessons learned. Fluid uses the term "impacts" to capture the broader scope of elements that can influence project outcomes.

Understanding Impacts in Fluid

Fluid’s approach to risk management acknowledges that various elements can impact a project's trajectory:

• Change: Recognises changes in project scope, requirements, or resources that can alter the project's course.
• Risk: Identifies potential threats that could hinder project progress.
• Issue: Addresses current problems that need immediate attention to avoid escalation.
• Dependency: Manages dependencies on external factors or other projects to ensure they do not cause delays or issues.
• Variation: Considers potential variations in project execution and their possible impacts.
• Relationship: Understands how relationships between project elements or stakeholders can influence project outcomes.
• Lessons Learned: Incorporates insights gained from past projects to inform future planning and execution, helping to avoid repeat mistakes and leverage successful strategies.

Fluid’s comprehensive approach to managing impacts ensures that all potential influences on a project are considered, providing a more holistic view of project management.

Using Fluid to Manage Project Impacts

Fluid offers a simple, intuitive interface to capture all project impacts with RAG status, owner, path to green, dependencies, impact and probability scores, risk ratings, and additional custom properties.

The tabs allow you to switch between different views:

• All Impacts: View all the impacts on the project grouped by type.
• Outgoing Dependencies: View dependencies the project has on other projects.
• Incoming Dependencies: View dependencies other projects have on your project.

You can also use the filter menu to display the impacts by type, display impacts that have been recently updated, or those that are assigned to you.

Creating and Editing Impacts

To create a new project impact, click on the + ADD NEW button. To edit an existing project impact, click on its title.

The first field on the impact dialog - Type - allows you to specify what type of impact you want to create:

• CHANGE: Controlling changes to the schedule, tasks, or scope.
• DEPENDENCY: Inter-dependency on another project in the portfolio.
• ISSUE: An event or condition that has negative consequences for a project. Tends to be unpredictable and can arise with no warning. Unmitigated risks often become issues.
• LESSONS LEARNED: Information that reflects both the positive and negative experiences of a project - to share learnings and use knowledge-from-experience to promote desirable outcomes on future projects.
• RELATIONSHIP: Relationships, both in and around the project that forms the project environment or sphere of influence and support, on which a project depends for its existence and need to be managed.
• RISK: An uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive (opportunity) or negative (threat) effect on one or more project objectives.
• VARIATION: Alterations that occur within the project in terms of costs, scope, resources, or other variations that impact the project delivery.

You can customise the list of impact types available to use on the instance. Click here to learn more about configuring impact types.

Impact Fields

The information that needs to be populated thereafter varies depending on the impact type selected. All fields are detailed below.

1. Type

   • Description: The category of the impact such as Risk, Issue, Change, etc.
   • Applies to: Risk, Issue, Change, Dependency, Relationship, Lessons Learned, Variation.

2. Title

   • Description: A concise and descriptive title that uniquely identifies the impact.
   • Applies to: Risk, Issue, Change, Dependency, Relationship, Lessons Learned, Variation.

3. Description

   • Description: A detailed description of the impact, including relevant information and context.
   • Applies to: Risk, Issue, Change, Dependency, Relationship, Lessons Learned, Variation.

4. Status

   • Description: The current status of the Impact (OPEN or CLOSED).
   • Applies to: Risk, Issue, Change, Dependency, Relationship, Lessons Learned, Variation.

5. Impact

   • Description: The severity or potential effect of the Impact.
   • Applies to: Risk, Issue, Change, Dependency, Relationship, Lessons Learned, Variation. This is the default setting but project administrators have the flexibility to configure which impact types this field apply to, as well as customise its values.

6. Probability

   • Description: The likelihood of the Impact occurring.
   • Applies to: Risk. As for the impact field, project administrators can configure which impact types this field applies to, as well as customise its values.
7. Risk Rating
   • Description: A calculated value based on the Impact and Probability, indicating the overall risk level.
   • Applies to: Risk by default but can be changed by project administrators.

8. Owner

   • Description: The person responsible for the impact and its mitigation.
   • Applies to: Risk, Issue, Change, Dependency, Relationship, Lessons Learned, Variation.

9. Due Date

   • Description: The date by which the Impact needs to be resolved.
   • Applies to: Risk, Issue, Change, Dependency, Relationship, Lessons Learned, Variation.

10. Resolution Date

    • Description: An alternate resolution date if different from the due date.
    • Applies to: Risk, Issue, Change, Dependency, Relationship, Lessons Learned, Variation.

11. Promoted

    • Description: Specifies how far up the hierarchy the Impact should be reported (e.g., Not Promoted, To Dashboard, To Parent Project, To Program).
    • Applies to: Risk, Issue, Change, Dependency, Relationship, Lessons Learned, Variation.

12. Mitigation

    • Description: The actions to be taken to mitigate the impact on the project.
    • Applies to: Risk, Issue, Change, Dependency, Relationship, Lessons Learned, Variation.

13. Dependent On

    • Description: Links the impact to any project in the portfolio that the impact might be dependent on.
    • Applies to: Risk, Issue, Change, Dependency, Relationship, Lessons Learned, Variation.

Note: Impact, Probability & Risk Rating - the impact types can be set up by the administrator to decide which impact types will have impact, probability and risk rating fields associated to them in the Impact, Probability Risk Rating Setup page. To learn more about Impact, Probability & Risk Rating, click here. 

Impact Dialog Options

The dialog for an impact can be expanded by selecting menu options on the left navigation. 

The following are the different dialog options seen on the left-hand navigation:

1. Status Updates

   • Description: Set a RAG status for the impact. The RAG status is surfaced on the project workspace and in any reporting of the project impacts.
     
     

2. Checklist

   • Description: A checklist of activities can be defined to help in tracking what needs to be done to close out the impact.

3. Attachments

   • Description: Add documents or links to the impact to keep all relevant and supporting documentation together in one place.

4. Follow On

   • Description: When an impact is assigned to an owner, a request for acknowledgment is automatically sent to the owner to confirm accountability for the impact. Linking a project as a dependency to an impact will also send a request for acknowledgment to the PM of the project the dependency is on to record their agreement with the dependency. These acknowledgments are added to the impact as follow-on actions so that they can be tracked as part of the impact. Additional follow-on actions can also be added if there is any additional activity needed in support of closing out the impact.
     
     

5. Comments

   • Description: Add your comments directly to the impact to keep all the conversation in relation to the impact in one place.

6. Permalink

   • Description: The unique URL for the impact. Copy and share this link so people can easily navigate straight to the impact.

Dependency Network Map

The Open Network Map opens up the interactive chart representing project impacts and their relationships/dependencies. The chart grows organically as impacts and their dependencies are defined for the portfolio.

Egocentric Chart

• The project nodes are shown in the colour of the current RAG status.
• Click on an impact in the chart to open its dialog box.
• Click on a project and select OPEN PRINCIPAL to open the project workspace, or SHOW DEPENDENCIES to pivot the chart.

This structure ensures a logical flow and makes the document more cohesive and easier to follow.