Risk Matrix to Report and Track Risks

A risk matrix places risks on a grid by their likelihood and impact so a project manager can make better decisions and manage risks.

A risk matrix is a valuable tool in prioritizing issues that pose the biggest risk to delivering a project on time.

Project managers are in the business of risk management.

They need to know which issues and opportunities could affect the schedule the most. Mitigating the biggest risks is essential to making sure their projects remain on time and on budget.

In Jira, risks are often entered as custom issues tied to Epics that include their probability, impact, and mitigation steps.

Having a single visual that summarizes all the risks on a Jira dashboard or Confluence page is essential to project managers managing and reporting on risks.

VisualScript's risk matrix report lets project managers see how well a project is performing based on the number of Jira issues in each column and pinpoint the biggest potential risks early to help mitigate them.

The Jira issues the script looks through need two fields filled in to complete the grid. Those are the probability and impact. Once the script runs, cells on the grid will show a number that represents the total number of risks with a specific probability and impact. For example, if there are three issues with probability "unlikely" and impact "trivial", that cell will show a number 3.

The higher the number in red cells, the more attention those Jira issues need to mitigate potential setbacks to the project.

VisualScript is also fully customizable so you can easily customize and tweak the built-in risk matrix to match your needs.

To generate a Risk Matrix using VisualScript, you'll need VisualScript installed on your Jira instance. Once VisualScript is added to your instance, you can add a VisualScript gadget to your dashboard. When the VisualScript gadget is added to a dashboard, you'll see a list of available reports to run. The built-in reports will be in a folder called "Built-In Reports".

Choose the "Jira Risk Matrix" report to add to your dashboard.

Next, you'll need to configure parameters. VisualScript will only need a project name or key to generate the visual. You can also specify multiple projects.

The script will look for all issues under the specified project(s) including Epics, Stories, bugs, tasks, sub-tasks. If you want the script to ignore a specific type of issue, remove it from the list.

Issues will be sorted into columns based on their impact and probability of occurring.

Everything is linked to data in Jira if you want to dig deeper.

While VisualScript offers a turn-key, no-code solution that will work out of the box for many teams, you can also easily make adjustments to create a custom report.

VisualScript comes with a built-in SDK that makes it easy to generate custom reports that fit your teams' needs. We even have friendly engineers who will help you get started.