Mastering Risk Management in Asana: Building Your Asana Risk Log Foundation (EP1)

Asana CS Team
3 days ago
4 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Welcome to "Mastering Risk Management in Asana," a series designed to transform how you handle project uncertainties! In the fast-paced world of project management, simply reacting to problems isn't enough. We need to be proactive, anticipating issues and minimizing their impact when they do inevitably crop up. And the best part? Your trusted project hub, Asana, is perfectly equipped to be your central command for risk. 🛡️

Episode 1: Building Your Asana Risk Log Foundation 🏗️

Let's lay the groundwork and set up your core risk tracking system.

Step 1: Create Your Central Risk Log Project 📁

Our first move is to establish a dedicated space for all your potential pitfalls. Create a blank project in Asana and name it straightforwardly: "Risk Log."

To keep things super organized and ensure a clear workflow, set up the following sections within this new project:

Newly Identified Risks: This is the inbox for any fresh, potential issues that pop onto your radar.
Assessing: Once identified, risks move here for a deeper dive. This is where you'll analyze their potential impact and likelihood.
Mitigation: For risks that require active strategies and concrete actions to reduce their threat.
Developing Risks: Risks that are escalating, becoming more imminent, or might need renewed attention.
Closed Risks: The final stop for risks that have been successfully resolved, mitigated, or are no longer a concern.

Step 2: Customise with Essential Risk Scoring Fields 📊

Now, let's add some crucial custom fields to help us categorise and score your risks effectively. You can add these fields by clicking the "Customise" button on the right side of your project, or by simply clicking the "+" next to the due date column. ✨

Likelihood: Add a Number Field and name it "Likelihood." This field will help you quantify how probable it is for a risk to occur (e.g., on a scale of 1-5). Make sure you add it to your custom field library for easy reuse across other projects! 📚
Severity: Next, add another Number Field, calling this one "Severity." This will quantify the potential impact if the risk does materialize (e.g., on a scale of 1-5). Again, remember to add it to your library. 🧮

Traditionally, risk management involves multiplying Likelihood by Severity to get a total risk score. For this, you'll need the Formula custom field. Use it to calculate your total Risk Score. ✖️

With these fields in place, you now have a robust way to score your risks. For instance, if you score both Likelihood and Severity from 1 to 5, your Risk Score will range from 1 to 25. 🎯

Finally, we need a way to quickly understand the overall criticality of a risk. Add a Single Select Custom Fieldand title it either "Risk Criticality" or "Risk Priority." You can define the options that best suit your organization's risk tolerance, but common examples include: Low, Medium, High, and Critical. 🚦

Step 3: Automate Priority with Asana Rules 🤖

This is where Asana's powerful automation truly shines and streamlines your risk management process! We're going to use Rules (also found under the "Customise" button) to automatically prioritize your risks based on their calculated score. ⚡

You can set up rules to automatically change the Risk Priority when the Risk Score crosses a certain threshold or falls within a specific range. For example, you could create a rule that says:

"When Risk Score is between 20 and 25, automatically set Risk Criticality to Critical." 🚩

You're not limited to just setting priority! You can use additional rules to route tasks based on their criticality. For instance, if a risk is deemed critical, it likely needs immediate attention:

"When Risk Criticality is Critical, automatically move the task to the Mitigation section." ➡️

💡Top Tip: Prevent Data Entry Errors for Likelihood & Severity! 🛑

To ensure accuracy and prevent users from accidentally typing incorrect numbers into your Likelihood and Severity fields, we can use a clever trick with Single Select dropdowns and Rules. 🧙‍♀️

First, create two new Single Select Custom Fields:
- One named "Likelihood Rating" with options: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
- Another named "Severity Rating" with options: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Now, create two Rules (found under the 'Customise' button):
- Rule 1: "When 'Likelihood Rating' changes, set 'Likelihood' to (value of) Likelihood Rating."
- Rule 2: "When 'Severity Rating' changes, set 'Severity' to (value of) Severity Rating."
Important: Users will now select the rating from the dropdown, and the rule will automatically populate the underlying Number field. You can then hide the original 'Likelihood' and 'Severity' Number fields from the task view (click the downward arrow next to the field name in the list view (column) and select 'Hide field') so users only interact with the user-friendly dropdowns. 🤫

Step 4: Integrate Risks into Your Projects (Multi-homing) 🔗

To ensure your risks are visible within the specific projects they relate to and in your central Risk Log, we'll leverage Asana's incredibly useful Multi-homing feature. 🏡

In each of your individual project templates or existing projects, create a new section called "Risks." Then, apply a multi-homing rule to this section. This means that any risk task created in the "Risks" section of a specific project will automatically appear in your main "Risk Log" project as well. 🔄

With this powerful setup, your risks will live in both places: within the context of their specific project for immediate team awareness and aggregated in your central Risk Log for comprehensive oversight and reporting. 📈

That's it for Episode 1! You've successfully laid the foundation for a robust, automated risk management system in Asana. 💪

Next Up: Episode 2 - Powering Your Risks with AI Studio! ⚡

You've built the system, now let's make it smart. In Episode 2, we'll reveal how to truly skyrocket your risk tracking, turning simple data into powerful foresight. You'll learn to:

Identify hidden risk trends and patterns. 🕵️
Analyze historical risk values to understand their trajectory. 🗓️
Monitor risk score changes and get alerted instantly when a risk is increasing. 🔔
All made possible by AI Studio! 🤖

Get ready to gain a predictive edge. Don't miss Episode 2!

Ready to implement a powerful risk management strategy like this for your business?

👉 Get in touch with us today to make it a reality!