Risk & LearningRisk Radar
At the start, sweep seven areas for what could go wrong, and give each risk one next step.
Most project failures were visible early to someone, usually someone who was never asked. A structured sweep at the start drags those worries into the open while they are still cheap to deal with.
How to use it
- Book an hour with leads from every discipline. Draw seven slices: product, production, tech, content, people, dependencies and dates.
- Work slice by slice. Everyone writes risks as "if this, then that", one per note.
- Rate each high, medium or low for likelihood and impact. Don't argue decimals.
- Give every high risk one next step with an owner: a test, a spike, a conversation or a fallback.
- Move the top three to five into your Production Risk Log, and rerun the sweep at every phase change.
Example
A small indie team runs the sweep before signing with a publisher. Under dependencies they notice the console port rests on one contractor; the next step is a second quote, which they ask for that week.
Watch out
- Risks nobody owns. A risk without a next step is a worry written down.
- Sweeping once and filing it. The landscape changes with each phase.
The dependencies slice is sharper with a Feature Dependency Chain, and the people slice feeds your Crunch Tripwires.