How to distinguish future risk from active issues, assess schedule impact, and manage owners, responses, float, and critical paths.
A risk is an uncertain future event that could affect objectives. An issue is a problem that has occurred and needs action. A change is a proposed alteration to an approved baseline. Classifying the situation correctly determines the appropriate record and response.
| Situation | Record and response |
|---|---|
| Possible future supplier delay | Risk register, owner, likelihood, impact, response, and trigger |
| Vendor outage delaying today’s test | Issue log, impact, owner, action, and escalation path |
| Approved scope must change | Change request and impact analysis |
The critical path is the sequence of dependent work that determines the earliest possible finish date. Float is the time an activity can slip without affecting a later milestone or completion date. Not every delay requires rebaselining; first assess dependencies, available float, and the impact on committed objectives.
Useful records make ownership visible: description, date, affected deliverables, severity or priority, owner, response, decision, due date, and current status.