Create and edit risks on projects

Last update: January 30, 2025

CREATED FOR:

  • User

Risks are possible events or factors that prevent a project from finishing on time or within budget. Risks can be recorded as part of creating the Business Case of a project or by using the Risks tab. Risks are created only on a project. You cannot associate risks with tasks or issues.

Risks can be associated with cost, but Actual Risk Cost does not impact the Actual Cost of the Project.

NOTE
This article defines the risks associated with the project as you define them in the Business Case of the project or as you add them in the Risks tab of the project. For information about the Risk field that is available when editing a project, see Edit projects.

Access requirements

You must have the following access to perform the steps in this article:

Expand to view access requirements for the functionality in this article.
Adobe Workfront planAny
Adobe Workfront license*

New: Standard

Current: Plan

Access level configurationsEdit access to Projects and Financial Data
Object permissionsManage permissions that include Manage Finance on the project for which you want to create or edit risks

*For information, see Access requirements in Workfront documentation.

Create and edit risks in the Business Case

You can create risks as part of planning the Business Case of a project. You can later edit them in the Business Case, when changes occur to their probability, mitigation plan, or cost, for example. For information about creating a Business Case, see Create a Business Case for a project.

Your Workfront administrator or group administrator must enable the Risks section in your Business Case in the Project Preferences area before you can view it at the project level in the Business Case section. For information about setting project preferences, see Configure system-wide project preferences.

Creating and editing risks in the Business Case is identical.

To create or edit a risk in the Business Case:

  1. Go to the project for which you want to create risks.

  2. Click Business Case in the left panel.

  3. In the Risks section, click Edit Risks.

  4. Enter or edit the following information:

    • Description: describe the risk.

    • Potential Cost: indicate the estimated cost if the risk should occur.

    • Probability: indicate the probability of the risk occurring as a percentage value.

    • Type: indicate what category the risk falls under.

    • Mitigation Plan: update the description of the plan to mitigate the risk.

    • Mitigation Cost: indicate the cost of the mitigation plan that you must put in place to prevent the risk from occurring.

  5. (Optional) Click Add Another Risk to add additional risks.

  6. Click Save.

Create and edit risks in the Risks area

In addition to creating and editing risks in the Business Case, you can do so using the Risks section of a project.

Create risks in the Risks area

  1. Go to the project you want to create risks for.

  2. Click Risks in the left panel.

    Risks section of task

  3. Click Start Adding Risks and create risks by in-line editing their information.

    Or

    Click New Risk. The New Risk dialog box opens.

  4. Enter the following information:

    • Description: describe the risk.

    • Risk Type: indicate what category the risk falls under.
      Your Workfront administrator defines the Risk Types available in your environment. For information about defining Risk Types, see the article Edit and create risk types.

    • Probability: indicate the probability of the risk occurring as a percentage value.

    • Potential Cost: indicate the estimated cost if the risk should occur.

    • Mitigation Cost: indicate the cost of the mitigation plan that you must put in place to prevent the risk from occurring.

    • Actual Cost: indicate the actual cost of the risk if the risk occurred.

    • Mitigation Plan: update the description of the plan to mitigate the risk.

  5. (Conditional) Click Enter if you are creating the risk in-line.

    Or

    Click Save if you are editing the information in the New Risk dialog box.

  6. (Optional) Select a different Status for the risk, in the Status drop-down menu, when applying the Standard view for the list of risks.

    By default, the Status of a risk is Identified.

Edit risks in the Risks area

You can edit risks during the life of a project, when changes occur in their probability, potential cost, or their status, for example.

You can edit one risk at a time, or you can edit multiple risks in bulk.

To edit risks:

  1. Navigate to a project for which you want to edit existing risks.

  2. Click Risks in the left panel.

  3. Start in-line editing the fields for the risks you see in the list to edit one risk at a time.

    Or

    Select one or several risks, then click Edit to edit multiple risks at the same time.

    NOTE
    You are applying the same information to all the risks selected, when you edit multiple risks at the same time. The information associated with each risk prior to your changes is overwritten in a bulk edit.

  4. If you have clicked Edit, the Edit Risk dialog box opens.

    Consider editing the following fields:

    • Description: edit the description of the risk.
    • Risk Type: indicate what category the risk falls under.
    • Probability: indicate the probability of the risk occurring as a percentage value.
    • Potential Cost: indicate the estimated cost if the risk should occur.
    • Mitigation Cost: indicate the cost of the mitigation plan that you must put in place to prevent the risk from occurring.
    • Actual Cost: indicate the actual cost of the risk if the risk occurred.
    • Mitigation Plan: update the description of the plan to mitigate the risk.

  5. Click Save Changes.

  6. (Optional) Edit the Status for a risk, in the Status drop-down menu, when applying the Standard view for the list of risks.

    NOTE
    You cannot edit the Status of risks in the Edit Risk dialog box. You can do so only in an in-line edit.

More help on this topic

Previous pageAttach a Custom Form to a Business Case
Next pageExport the Business Case of a project

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