Project Risk Workshop: What Could Go Wrong?

Okay, everyone, thanks for coming.

Today we're building the risk register for the payments launch.

Ha, great. Two hours of imagining disasters.

Honestly, that's my favorite part of the job.

Every risk gets a likelihood, an impact, and an owner.

So, what keeps you up at night?

Honestly? The fraud-check provider.

Every single transaction goes through their API,

and we have no fallback whatsoever.

Wait, so it's a single point of failure?

Exactly. If they go down, we go down.

Okay. That's high impact. What about likelihood?

Well... they had two outages last quarter.

Hmm, let's talk worst-case scenario, then.

How long could we go without taking payments?

Ugh, maybe an hour before customers start screaming.

An hour? That could cost us half a million dollars!

Right, so this goes straight to the top of the register.

Let's look at mitigation first.

Oh, we could add a second provider as a backup!

Hmm, that's another contract, and another invoice.

It comes down to our risk appetite, really.

How much downtime is the business willing to accept?

Well... frankly, close to none.

Then we're paying for the backup. Simple.

And our contingency plan, if both providers fail?

We just queue the orders and process them later.

Great. So who'll own this risk?

Ha, I suppose that's me, isn't it?

Congratulations. Nobody else wanted it anyway.

Even with the backup, there's still some residual risk.

There always is. But I can live with this.

Excellent! One down, only forty-six to go!

Forty-six? I'm going to need more coffee.