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5-step risk assessment template: Assess risk with Coda
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5-step risk assessment template: Assess risk with Coda

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Project risk assessment template

Perform a thorough risk assessment of your projects in 5 steps with a template that you can share with your team.
Laila Robinson
Risk is a natural part of life. No matter what you’re doing, there is always at least some risk involved. The good news is that you can manage a successful project by using proper risk control measures.

What is risk assessment?

Risk assessment in project management is a qualitative and quantitative measure used to identify potential risks, figure out the likelihood of the risk happening, and determine how those risks might impact your project.
While risk assessment isn’t designed to help you avoid risk, it can help you decide whether or not a risk is worth it. Then you can come up with a further action plan to help mitigate said risks.
A risk is defined as anything that could potentially happen that affects the desired outcome of a project or affects the people, processes, technology, and resources used in a project.

What is a risk assessment template?

A risk assessment template is one of the most practical risk management tools because the template gives you a process to follow for assessing any potential risk that comes up during your project.
Using this risk assessment template also allows you to have increased visibility to see the risks across projects and accordingly allocate resources to projects that need them the most, based on the probability and impact of the risks.
Play with this template built in Coda below! And then
Make a copy
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to save your edits.
Risks
2
Related Projects
Risk
Probability
Impact
Action
Addressed
Launch Monetization Ecosystem
System Crash
15%
Extreme
Add Action
System Bugs
20%
Medium
Add Action
Release alpha version of product
Alpha crashes
45%
Extreme
Add Action
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Action Items
2
Risk
Action
Vote
Added By
Executed
1
System Crash
Create back up system
develop separate launch plan
1
Adam Davis
2
System Bugs
Setup team of developers to fix bugs onsite
1
Ben Lee
3
Alpha crashes
Create a system for engineers to address a crash
1
Buck Dubois
No results from filter
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Why does a business need to conduct project risk assessment?

You may consider using a risk assessment template if your team is...
Repeatedly running into the same problems
Having trouble identifying risks ahead of time
Or needs to be aligned on an action plan to mitigate risks
Risk assessment is a critical part of your workflow. Let’s look at exactly how a risk assessment helps your business.

Proactivity

Being proactive by identifying a risk and being prepared for it is the best way to set your project up for success. That means you could be worrying about something that may not even happen. But if the risk does happen, then you’ll have a plan in place to mitigate its impact.
When you’re not proactive, you will likely find yourself reacting to problems after they happen, which feels like you’re always playing catch up.

Accountability

Similar to being proactive, conducting a risk assessment allows you to be accountable when things go wrong. Rather than scrambling to try to explain why something suddenly went wrong to a stakeholder, you can easily say, “As we discussed, x situation happened. Luckily, we have a plan in place to deal with this exact scenario.”
It doesn’t matter how bad the risk may be - if you have a plan to address it then you’re showing your stakeholders that you are prepared and care about positive outcomes.

Transparency

People don’t like hearing about risk, but they do like hearing that you are prepared for all the possible scenarios. Running a risk assessment at the beginning of your project allows you to be transparent with your stakeholders and show them what may happen throughout a project.
Showing people what could go wrong may be seen as negative, but by sharing a plan to mitigate risk (as risk is almost always inevitable), you’re increasing confidence.
It is better to show your stakeholders that you are proactively managing risk rather than reacting to its impact.

Improved collaboration

There are few things that improve collaboration better than having plans for everything, including risk. We’ve all been in situations with people who are flying by the seat of their pants, dealing with the various problems as they come up, rather than having a plan.
Conducting a risk assessment will help you better collaborate to manage those moments where you encounter an identified risk, so that everyone can get back to work faster.


How to do a risk assessment in 5 steps using this free template

Running a risk assessment can be quick if you know the steps and have the right risk assessment tools.
Copy this template
⁠

Step 1: Define projects and a timeline

Start with the
Projects
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page on the risk assessment template to define your organization’s goals and dates for when you are planning to achieve them. Fill out the Projects and Description section in the
Projects
⁠
table and the risks associated with your project in this table will be automatically filled in after you complete Step 2.
Below the
Projects
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table, you can see a visual timeline of the projects:
Visual of projects
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. You can see the Start date, End date, and Duration of the project which will allow for increased visibility for your entire team to see the practical timeline of projects.
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Project table that has columns for name and description, risk column that auto-populates from risk table, and project start and end dates.
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Step 2: Identify the risks

The next step of using the risk assessment template is identifying
Risks
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on this page. As defined above, risks are anything that could potentially impact the outcome of a project.
Capture everything that could happen regardless of how far-fetched the risk might seem – the more risks identified, the better prepared you’ll be.
Click the Add risk button to add risks and then identify their Related Projects in the
Risk register
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table based on the projects identified in Step 1.

Step 3: Determine the likelihood of the risk happening, and assess the risk

Once you’ve identified the hazards and potential risks within a project, rank the risk based on how likely it is to happen and rank the potential impact of the risk. For each risk you identify, think about the impact on your business, customers, and stakeholders.
For each risk added in the
Risk register
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table, add a Description about the Risk, its Probability (from a scale of 0-100%), and the Impact this risk may have on your project.
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Risk register table grouped by projects. Includes columns for risks, a description, probability, impact, and a button to add actions.
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Step 4: Come up with a plan

For risk mitigation to be effective, you need a plan. Rather than flying by the seat of your pants, you can come up with a risk management plan for each risk identified in Steps 2 and 3.
In the
Risk register
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table, use the Add Action button for each risk to add a potential action that can reduce or completely eliminate the risks’ impact.
All actions are grouped by the risk they are associated with in the
Actions
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table. In this table, team members are also allowed to Vote on action ideas they like and give Feedback on action ideas to increase collaboration and transparency.
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Actions table that pulls in risks from risks table and has columns for action, voting, who added it, and feedback.
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Step 5: Document everything

As always, the more you document, the better off you’ll be. This doesn’t just mean taking notes during the previous steps. The goal of a risk assessment template is to almost create a record, or manual, for how to handle each kind of risk you may encounter during a project. Your teammates can reference what has worked, what didn’t work, and whether or not your assessment was accurate.
In the final step of the risk assessment template, the
Archive
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page allows all team members of the organization to see
Archived risks
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once they have been marked as Addressed in the Risk register table, or
Executed actions
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once they have been marked as Executed in the Actions table.
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Archived risks and executed actions table for record-keeping. Rows in these tables will populate if they were marked as archived or executed in the relevant risk register or actions table.
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Start with:
Projects
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👉 Get started with this risk assessment template.
Copy this template
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⁠

Looking for a risk assessment template to get you started? You can easily copy this template and customize it to your needs.
Learn more about
project management risk assessment
⁠
. Other risk assessment matrix templates include this
red-yellow-green risk assessment template
⁠
and this
risk matrix template.
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