Creating an effective issue management register
The issue register is an effective tool within a project, if your issues can be identified and quantified. Issues should, in an ideal world, only come from your risk register; however, this is not always true. Therefore, it is important to review and record issues as they arise.
Getting ready
Before starting, it is important to understand that issues can occur anywhere within the project. Therefore, it is important to allow all the team members to raise issues within the project and provide periodic feedback.
How to do it...
Open the Project Control Register:
- Open your Requirements Traceability Matrix and create a new tab called Issues:
- Identify the key information to record for all issues:
- Issue ID: A unique ID assigned to the issue
- Risk ID: The associated Risk ID the issue is related to
- Requirements #: The associated requirement # for the issue
- Decision/Action/Note: The decisions, actions, or notes for the issue
- Status: The status of the issue
- Description: The description of the issue
- Assigned To: The individual that the issue is assigned to
- Start Date: The date the issue was raised
- Planned End Date: The date the issue is expected to be resolved
- Comments: Any additional information for the issue
- For issues, it is important to have a very simple priority mechanism. Typical values for this include:
- Priority:
- i. Critical — should only be used when this causes a stoppage to activities on the project.
- ii. High — realized risk or new issue that will have significant impact on the project if not solved.
- iii. Medium — realized risk or new issue that will have moderate impact on the project if not solved.
- iv. Low — realized risk or new issue that will have low impact on the project if not solved.
How it works...
Issues on a project are events which are required to be scheduled and actioned for work. If an issue does not directly affect the schedule in the short or medium term, cost, or solution, then it is not an issue and needs to be migrated to the risk register.
There's more...
Projects often confuse issues and risks. This causes projects to focus a lot of time and energy trying to resolve issues, which do not exist or have not been realized. Therefore, you need to immediately differentiate between issues and risks. Risks are events which may occur and affect your project; issues are risks which have occurred, or other events, which have taken place in your project. Issues impact the project; risks may impact the project.