IMPACTS: Managing Risks, Issues & Dependencies

One simple, intuitive interface to capture all project impacts with RAG status, owner, path to green, dependencies and additional custom properties.

From the top banner you can switch between:

• a view of all the impacts on the project - grouped by type.
• outgoing dependencies (dependencies the project has on other projects). 
• incoming dependencies (dependencies other projects have on your project).

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

Creating/Editing Impacts

To create a new project impact, click on + 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 impact you want to create:

• CHANGE: Controlling changes to the schedule or 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. 

The information that needs to be populated thereafter varies depending on the impact type selected - all fields are detailed in the table below:

	Risk	Issue	Change	Dependency	Relationship	Lessons Learned	Variation
Type:  Supports root cause analysis in the portfolio. Configurable field.
Title:  The name of the Impact.
Description:  A detailed description can be included if required.
Status:  The Impact status as OPEN or CLOSED.
Impact:  The severity of the Impact.
Probability:  The likelihood of the Impact occurring.
Owner:  Owner of the impact and the person responsible for mitigation by the due date.
Due Date:  The date the Impact needs to be resolved.
Resolution Date:  Alternate resolution date if different to the due date.
Promoted:  Specify how far up the hierarchy the Impact should be reported - Not Promoted, To Dashboard (SteerCo report), To Parent Project or To Program.
Mitigation:  The actions to be taken to mitigate the impact on the project.
Dependent On: Link the impact to any project in the portfolio that the impact might be dependent on.
Related to:  Link the impact to any project in the portfolio that it may be related to.

Impact dialog 

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

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

Title	Description
Status Updates	Set a RAG status for the impact. The RAG status are surfaced on the project workspace and in any reporting of the project impacts.
Checklist	A checklist of activity can be defined to help in tracking what needs to be done to close out on the impact.
Attachments	Add documents or links to the impact to keep all relevant and supporting documentation together in one place.
Follow On	When an impact is assigned an owner request for acknowledgement is automatically sent to the owner to confirm the accountability for the impact.  Linking a project as a dependency to an impact will also send a request for acknowledgement to the PM of the project the dependency is on to verify their agreement with the dependency. These acknowledgements 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.
Comments	Add you comments directly to the impact to keep all the conversation in relation to the impact in one place.
Permalink	Under 'Permalink' is the unique URL for the IMPACT. Copy and share this link so people can easily navigate straight to the IMPACT.

Dependency 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.

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...

... Or click on a project and select OPEN PRINCIPAL to open the project workspace, or SHOW DEPENDENCIES to pivot the chart.