Episode 7: Risk and Mitigation, and Future Considerations: Some Words of Caution

August 1, 2024

In my experience, I've noticed some common mistakes when teams present their Risk and Mitigation slides. One issue is introducing new information late in the presentation, which can disrupt the flow of the storyline. My teams have adopted a strategy of seamlessly integrating the Risk and Mitigation Strategy into the story to address this.

The team needs to conduct their analysis and identify any risks. These risks are often summarised when the team introduces alternatives in the pros and cons. I suggest labelling these as benefits and risks. Aside from identifying risks as part of the analysis, the mitigations need to be included in the implementation plan.

What does this look like in practice? The first point is that the risk and mitigation can be moved to backup slides if time does not permit talking about it. It can also be used as a time control slide. If time is tight, teams can also tell judges to ask them questions in the Q&A or talk about only the most important risks and then ask them questions in the Q&A.

With the slide itself, the risks must be presented with the biggest risks first and the lesser risks next. The first step is to rank risks based on both likelihood and severity and to combine these to rank the identified risks. As teams do this ranking, it is also important to note that mitigations have little impact on the likelihood but can reduce the severity when they are managed correctly.

Risk Matrix

Often, after presenting risks and mitigations, teams talk about future considerations. This is an opportunity to display out-of-the-box and creative thinking. It is also an opportunity that can confuse judges if not handled properly. Judges mistakenly confuse future consideration with the recommendation or see it as an addition to the recommendation. My word of caution to my teams has been to preface the future considerations as not for the current time, but after the solution is successfully implemented, then these considerations can be thought about.