project-risk-register-builder
Build-an-X workflow producing a project-level risk register - risks to project execution (schedule slippage, environment instability, people / staffing, vendor / dependency, scope creep) rather than the product itself. Walks the author through ISO 31000-aligned identification, impact × likelihood scoring, mitigation strategy (avoid / mitigate / transfer / accept), and ownership; the project manager reviews it weekly. Use for release-execution risk. For product-quality risks use product-risk-register-builder, for the per-release product risk table use risk-matrix, and to sign off accepting one specific risk use risk-acceptance-decision-author.
Install with skills.sh (any agent)
npx skills add testland/qa --skill project-risk-register-builderproject-risk-register-builder
Overview
A project risk register captures risks to project execution - schedule, environment, people, vendor, scope - separate from product-quality risks. Per ISTQB CTAL-TM, the distinction is:
This skill scopes project risks. Cite ISTQB glossary (glossary.istqb.org (opens in new window)) "product risk" + "project risk".
When to use
Step 1 - Identify by category
Per ISO 31000:2018 (cite by stable ID) and PMI PMBOK 7th edition risk categorisation, project risks fall into broad buckets:
| Category | Example risks |
|---|---|
| Schedule | Estimate uncertainty; downstream dependency slippage; holiday / OOO clashes |
| People / staffing | Key engineer leaves; on-call rotation under-staffed; specialist knowledge concentrated |
| Scope | Scope creep mid-sprint; spec ambiguity; stakeholder mid-flight changes |
| Environment / infrastructure | Staging environment broken; CI / test infrastructure outage |
| Vendor / third-party | API deprecation by vendor; vendor SLA breach; cloud-provider regional outage |
| Compliance / regulatory | Audit deadline missed; new regulation in flight (e.g., GDPR, SOC 2) |
| Budget | Cloud-spend overrun; tool licensing surprise |
| Communication | Cross-team alignment failures; missing stakeholder sign-off |
Aim for 8-20 active project risks at any time. Stale entries get retired.
Step 2 - Score per impact × likelihood
Impact 1-5:
1 = Minor delay / inconvenience
2 = Multi-day delay; small re-work
3 = Sprint slippage; significant re-work
4 = Release slippage; major re-plan
5 = Quarter slippage; reputation / financial damage
Likelihood 1-5:
1 = Very unlikely (<10% in horizon)
2 = Unlikely (~25%)
3 = Possible (~50%)
4 = Likely (~75%)
5 = Very likely (>90%)
Score = Impact × Likelihood (range 1-25)Step 3 - Pick a mitigation strategy
Per ISO 31000:2018, four standard responses:
| Strategy | When | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Avoid | Risk is so high that the project scope is reshaped to remove it | Decline a Q4 launch that requires a known-fragile dependency |
| Mitigate | Reduce likelihood or impact via active intervention | Add a staging-mirror to reduce dependency-outage risk |
| Transfer | Shift the risk via contract / insurance / outsourcing | Vendor contract clause for SLA breach; insurance policy |
| Accept | Document + monitor; act when (if) it triggers | Note a Q1 holiday-staffing risk; OOO calendar visible |
Document the chosen strategy per risk.
Step 4 - Document the register
# Project risk register - <project / quarter>
**Last reviewed:** YYYY-MM-DD **Owner:** <PM> **Next review:** YYYY-MM-DD
## Active risks (n=11)
| ID | Category | Risk | Impact | Likelihood | Score | Strategy | Mitigation | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---:|---:|---:|---|---|---|---|
| PJ-001 | Schedule | Q2 launch depends on Stripe migration; Stripe rate-limits doc work | 4 | 3 | 12 | Mitigate | Run migration in parallel with team-2 work | Alice | Active |
| PJ-002 | People | Senior payments engineer on parental leave Q2 | 4 | 5 | 20 | Mitigate | Knowledge-transfer sessions Q1; pair-coding | Bob | Active |
| PJ-003 | Vendor | Auth0 deprecating legacy SDK Q3 | 3 | 5 | 15 | Mitigate | Migrate to new SDK Q2 (1 sprint allocated) | Carol | Active |
| PJ-004 | Compliance | SOC 2 Type II audit Q3 - controls evidence collection backlog | 5 | 3 | 15 | Mitigate | Hire compliance contractor; start collection Q1 | Dan | Active |
| PJ-005 | Environment | Staging cluster autoscale unreliable | 3 | 4 | 12 | Mitigate | Migrate staging to k8s-autopilot Q2 | Eve | Active |
| PJ-006 | Scope | "AI feature" spec drifting in stakeholder reviews | 3 | 4 | 12 | Mitigate | Lock spec by end Q1; weekly stakeholder review | Fran | Active |
| PJ-007 | Schedule | Cyber-week launch window non-negotiable | 5 | 2 | 10 | Mitigate + Accept | Buffer + war-room ready | Alice | Active |
| ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
## Retired / triggered risks (n=4)
| ID | Risk | Outcome | Lessons |
|---|---|---|---|
| PJ-R-001 | DB migration vendor delay | Triggered Q1; mitigated by parallel path | Two-vendor strategy works |
| PJ-R-002 | Staffing - onboarding lag | Not triggered | Mitigation (early hire) effective |Step 5 - Weekly review cadence
Project risks evolve fast. Weekly review at standup or PM syncpoint:
## Week of YYYY-MM-DD review
- **PJ-002** (key engineer leave): KT session 3/4 complete. Score
unchanged.
- **PJ-003** (Auth0 SDK): migration started; likelihood drops 5 → 3.
New score: 9 (was 15).
- **New PJ-012**: Cloud provider regional outage (us-east-1) on
YYYY-MM-DD reminded us of single-region risk. Impact 4,
likelihood 2, score 8. Strategy: monitor.
- **Triggered PJ-007** (Cyber-week launch): launched successfully;
retire.Step 6 - Escalation triggers
Risks scoring ≥15 trigger escalation:
## Escalations this week
- **PJ-002** (score 20): Engineering Director informed.
Mitigation status: 3/4 KT sessions held; remaining pair-coding
blocked on engineer availability.Worked example - quarterly project risk distribution
For a 12-risk register in a Q2 release:
| Category | Count | Avg score | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Schedule | 3 | 13 | 16 |
| People | 2 | 16 | 20 |
| Vendor | 2 | 12 | 15 |
| Scope | 2 | 11 | 12 |
| Environment | 2 | 10 | 12 |
| Compliance | 1 | 15 | 15 |
People + Schedule are dominant - staffing + dependency mitigations need most attention.
Anti-patterns
| Anti-pattern | Why it fails | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Mixing project + product risks in one register | Confuses risk-response strategies | Separate registers; this for project, product-risk-register-builder for product |
| "Mitigate" is the only strategy | "Accept" is legitimate; not every risk needs an action | Use all 4 strategies (Avoid / Mitigate / Transfer / Accept) |
| Weekly review skipped during crunch | Risks compound when ignored | Hold review even briefly; stale register is worse than no register |
| No retired-risks log | Lose lessons learned | Always keep retired list |
| Score 25 without escalation | Owner alone can't manage critical risks | Escalation rule per Step 6 |
| Mitigation without owner | Risk floats; no one accountable | Always name an owner |
| Status column missing | Can't tell if mitigation is on track | "Active / In progress / Mitigated / Triggered / Retired" status |
Limitations
References
Related skills
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Build-an-X workflow that produces a structured risk-acceptance decision document - for risks the team has decided to accept (rather than mitigate / transfer / avoid). Walks the author through the ISO 31000 risk-acceptance criteria (rationale, sign-off, scope, review trigger, exit conditions), captures stakeholder approval, and links to the originating risk register entry. Output is a Markdown decision artefact that lives alongside the risk register and provides audit-defensible justification for the team's acceptance choice. Use when a risk register entry's Strategy column is set to Accept, or an already-accepted risk comes up for its scheduled re-review, an audit, or a post-incident look-back.
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Build-an-X workflow that produces a risk-to-test-coverage matrix - maps each risk in the product/release register to the tests / cases / monitoring that mitigate it. Walks the author through ingesting risks (from risk-matrix / product-risk-register-builder), inventorying test coverage (test cases via traceability-matrix-builder, automated tests via repo scan, production monitoring via observability dashboards), and computing per-risk coverage depth + identifying orphan risks (no coverage) + orphan tests (not linked to risks). Output is a Markdown matrix + executive summary. Use before a release sign-off or compliance audit, when the team must show which tests, cases, or monitors back each registered risk and which risks have nothing behind them.
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Produces the per-feature / per-release risk-matrix artifact itself: a structured intake (feature, category, impact 1-5 by likelihood 1-5, score), mitigations with owners and due dates, supporting both lightweight (impact by likelihood) and heavyweight (FMEA / Cost of Exposure) methods per RBT canon, output as a Markdown / spreadsheet the team reviews each sprint. Use when building the matrix artifact; to facilitate the live risk-storming meeting use risk-storming-facilitator, to calibrate scores across raters use risk-matrix-calibration, and to map the resulting risks onto test coverage use risk-coverage-mapper.
risk-matrix-calibration
Checks an already-written risk matrix against what actually happened. Maps each row's likelihood rating to observed defect density, test failure rate and code churn, maps its impact rating to the severity mix and escape rate, then classifies each row as over-stated, under-stated, in-agreement, or not calibrated, using stated reporting thresholds so small differences are not treated as findings. Every proposed rating change carries the observation that produced it, and every proposal is handed to the matrix owner rather than applied. Also emits candidate new entries for areas that show up in defect data but have no row. Owns calibration only: choosing a scoring methodology, designing the matrix structure, picking risk categories, mapping risks to test types, FMEA scoring, review cadence and file storage are all out of scope. Use when a matrix has been driving test decisions for at least three releases and nobody has yet checked whether its ratings match the defects, escapes and incidents that followed.
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Reference guide for planning and facilitating a risk-storming session yourself - meeting structure, participant roster, per-category brainstorm prompts (categories from risk-matrix), affinity grouping, impact by likelihood scoring, and mitigation assignment. Static reference only, not an active runner that writes the matrix file. Use to learn or teach the facilitation pattern, or to run a feature-kickoff session without agent assistance. For the matrix artifact itself use risk-matrix, to calibrate its ratings against real defect data use risk-matrix-calibration, and to map the resulting risks onto test coverage use risk-coverage-mapper.
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Pattern catalog for "I can't write the test first" moments - recognizes common testability blockers (singletons / static dependencies, network in constructors, time / random as hidden inputs, deeply nested construction, untestable boundaries) and proposes the refactor that unblocks TDD (extract interface, dependency injection, seam, ports-and-adapters). Use as TDD coaching when an engineer is stuck on a class of code. For a catalog of what-to-test heuristics with no story use heuristic-test-design-reference, to label a change's shape before planning test effort use code-change-shape-classifier, and for conventions on writing the test well once the code is testable use test-code-conventions.
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Takes a user story or feature spec and emits a markdown test-case matrix - one row per case (id, title, precondition, steps, expected, tier) covering happy path, alternate paths, boundaries, and negative paths - before any test code is written. Output is the human-reviewable matrix that goes into TestRail / Qase / Xray. Emits the human-reviewable case matrix itself - not Gherkin scenarios written against locked acceptance criteria, and not executable test code. Use as the first artifact a manual tester or three-amigos session produces from a story, ahead of automation.
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Turns a list of testable areas plus a change-shape distribution into a PERT three-point test effort estimate, reporting every row as a range around the expected value rather than a single number, requiring a named assumptions ledger across six mandatory categories, and recommending a per-layer ownership split across developer, automation, and exploratory roles. Owns the hours and the ownership recommendation only: it consumes a change-shape distribution rather than producing one, and it does not choose which tests to run or how deep coverage should go. Use when an epic or release has been broken into testable areas and someone is about to commit test capacity for a sprint.
test-pyramid-balancer
Build-an-X workflow that analyzes a repo's test mix (unit / integration / E2E counts + runtimes) and recommends rebalancing toward the test pyramid ratios per the change-set shape - pure-logic-heavy repo wants ~80/15/5; UI-heavy repo wants ~60/25/15. Detects 'ice-cream cone' (E2E-heavy) and 'hourglass' (integration-thin) anti-patterns. Use when the user asks about test distribution, test strategy, test balance, too many E2E tests, slow CI caused by tests, testing best practices, or rebalancing their test suite; also suitable for quarterly calibration of the test mix to codebase reality.
test-strategy-author
Authors a test strategy document (a master test plan) for a project, release, or feature - covers scope, in/out, test types per layer (unit / integration / contract / E2E / perf / security / a11y), risk-based test prioritization that maps top risks to test investment (per `risk-matrix`), tooling stack, environments, exit criteria, and ownership. Use when a team needs the release-readiness artifact stakeholders sign off on before significant test investment, and the reference engineering teams return to when scope or quality questions arise.
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Defines the output contract for writing down a chosen developer tool as a portable decision record: the observed project signal, exactly one primary recommendation, rationale that names the rejected alternative, what to read next, and a mandatory list of the conditions that would flip the choice. Adapts Architecture Decision Record conventions (context, decision, consequences, status, supersede rather than edit) to tool selection, and refuses any recommendation inferred from a README or a folder name instead of a manifest, lockfile, config file, or existing test directory. Distinct from a catalog or advisor that compares candidate tools on their merits: this owns the shape of the written record, not the comparison. Use when a tool has just been chosen (test framework, build tool, linter, package manager, migration tool) and the choice needs to be recorded so a later reader can see the signal, the rejected alternative, and what would reverse it.