Risk Assessments

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Manage Risk with ThinkTank™ Team Collaboration Software

Every organization needs to manage the business risks they face. In response to Sarbanes-Oxley and other business regulations, corporations face legal requirements to analyze and mitigate risks in a comprehensive manner. Within an organization, all prudent project teams manage risks as part of their implementation approach.

When failure isn't an option, your only choice is to conduct a frank evaluation of the hazards you face. But the process for identifying, assessing and mitigating these risks, doesn't have to be long and arduous. A ThinkTank™ risk workshop will enable your team to identify, assess and mitigate risks in less than half the time of traditional approaches.

Old School	ThinkTank™
Hold a “whiteboard” session where one person speaks a time, domineering personalities drone on and on…	Supplement discussion with simultaneous entry of risks by all stakeholders. Everyone gets a full say – more risks are identified and much quicker.
Conference call or web conference for virtual participants. Calls miss much of the context; web conferencing shares Powerpoints, but doesn’t collect feedback.	Use ThinkTank™ to get their active input, they see and add to all risks/ideas/comments in REAL TIME
Risk political trouble bringing up sensitive topics	Enable anonymous input for FRANK discussions
Rely on “gut feel” or slow, painful discussions to identify the important risks	Quickly throw the identified risks into votes on impact and likelihood for each risk. Measure team consensus automatically.
Repeat the slow, painful process to develop risk mitigation strategies	Repeat the fast, fun ThinkTank™ process
Transcribe all the meeting notes, hope you got the meaning correct, send out the document weeks later	Automatically generate verbatim, detailed notes on all risks, mitigation approaches and discussion. Send it to all participants in minutes.

Identify the Risks

With ThinkTank™, participants start by reviewing and agreeing on the business objectives of the department, organization, or project. The participants then enter all of the risks that they can identify within the business area being covered. ThinkTank's™ real-time, simultaneous idea submission greatly accelerates the risk gathering process and supplements the ongoing discussions. ThinkTank's™ ability to collect ideas anonymously helps ensure complete openness. Participants can then drag and drop the risks into logical categories.

Assess which Risks are Significant

The next stage is typically a vote on the risks under two criteria: 1) the likelihood of the risk occurring; 2) the scale of impact of the risk. There may be differences of opinion between the participants; these will be clearly highlighted by analyzing the spread of votes in ThinkTank™. Participants can then record what controls are in place for these risks, starting with the high likelihood, high impact risks.

Develop Risk Mitigation Strategies

Depending on the nature of the risks, it may be necessary to brainstorm on risk mitigation strategies. Finally, these mitigation approaches can be evaluated by their cost to implement and effectiveness at reducing the risk.

A typical risk workshop usually runs a half to a full day. The full record of the sessions, with all the comments and risks that have been entered is automatically produced by ThinkTank™ and services as a valuable audit document. ThinkTank's™ Action Planner ensures that all follow up tasks have been agreed upon and are clearly documented.

In short, ThinkTank™ is the best way to understand the risks your team faces and develop a plan to overcome them. Ask how you can get the free ThinkTank™ Risk Management template and get started today.