Rebles Guide to PM
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3 Productivity Saboteurs and What To Do About Them
Why is it that some days you just aren’t that productive? Maybe your productivity saboteurs are at work. There are plenty of things at work that make it hard for you to progress your projects – the skill is in being able to identify and tackle them so you can keep moving forward.
In this article I’ll explain the top three reasons why people aren’t as productive as they would like to be: procrastination, disorganization and poor planning. You’ll also learn some tips for dealing with each of those so you can work efficiently.
1. Procrastination
Procrastination is the biggest productivity killer for over a third of project managers, according to research I did for my book, Managing Multiple Projects.
Procrastination can be characterized by general dithering about, putting off tasks and choosing to work on other things because they are easier or shorter, and not making progress.
Humans seem to be wired to find easy ways to do things, and sometimes doing a completely different task is easier than the big, difficult thing you’ve got at the top of your To Do list.
What to do about it
If it feels like procrastinating is a challenge you share, here are some tips for managing procrastination.
- Write down your goal or the vision for your work and stick it up near your desk. Being able to see your targets can help you stay on track.
- Make the most of your calendar. Plan time so you have blocks of hours available to work on certain things. Use colour coding to help keep you on track.
- Get enough sleep. When you are tired, you’ll fall into the habit of doing the easy work because you don’t have the cognitive capacity to deal with anything that takes strategic thinking or a bit of brainpower.
- Eat regularly. You’ll know how your body reacts without food: skipping lunch is rarely a good idea, especially if it makes you cranky.
- Break big tasks into smaller ones. People procrastinate because it feels too difficult to make progress on activities that feel too big. If you can break the work down into smaller activities, you might find it easier to make some progress.
Focus on the consequences of not doing something. There might not be any consequences, in which case, you have to ask yourself, why am I spending time on this?
However, there are probably going to be substantive consequences for you and for your project if the work doesn’t get done. If you’re aware of those, that could give you a little bit of pressure for making sure that you make time to do your tasks.
2. Disorganization
Over one in five project managers say that their biggest productivity saboteur is being disorganized. Given that being organized is pretty much a key skill for someone managing projects, that might come as a surprise.
However, when things are busy at work, corners are cut – often with good intentions. Later, that causes problems because the task wasn’t completed in exactly the right way.
Being disorganized leads to not being able to find important information in a timely fashion. It can contribute to missing deadlines, because you didn’t remember, or didn’t know, they were coming. It can result in turning up late for meetings, not working on the right things, or duplicating tasks that someone else has already completed.
What to do about it
Here are some things that you can do to help and resolve disorganization if you recognize that as one of your productivity saboteurs.
- Create alerts and calendar notifications to act as reminders. Don’t use the default: set reminders for a few days in advance if you struggle to send out meeting agendas on time, for example.
- Pick one thing and build in the structure that is missing. For example, start filing documents or attachments, or create a contact list of people you work with.
- Choose one method for taking notes and stick to it, whether that’s a notebook, an app, dictation which you transcribe, or something else.
A lot of the feelings of overwhelm and disorganization stem from technology. Modern collaboration tools are designed to be intuitive and need little training, and unfortunately that’s meant that employees are often left to their own devices to work out how to effectively use the tools they are given.
While you can pick up the basics with very little learning curve, there are often helpful shortcuts and best practices available – if only you knew about them.
Being able to confidently use your software tools can make the difference between feeling like data is lost forever and being able to quickly save and retrieve important information, and stay more organized.
3. Poor planning
Poor planning is the productivity saboteur that 20% of project managers find the biggest challenge. It results in having to do rework, and causing confusion because you’re not exactly sure where to start, so you might start on something that’s not the right task for now.
Poor planning can really affect how much progress you’re making.
Often plans fail because the right people were not involved in creating them. You’ve probably been in a situation where someone tells you what needs to happen by when: it’s not a good feeling because it removes your agency.
This impact on motivation and commitment may be the difference between hitting a date and not hitting it, so if you can encourage others to tell you when their pieces of the project will be completed, that’s a starting point for your scheduling.
What to do about it
Unsurprisingly, the fix for poor planning is to plan! Here are some tips.
- Create a plan, even if you know it will change. Choose the right level of detail for the uncertainty you are working with and check out rolling wave planning as a technique for scheduling when you don’t have all the details.
- Try to influence your environment to bring more stability to the work. This might take a few difficult conversations with internal customers or senior leaders to highlight the challenges of trying to get things done when everything changes.
- Agree a process for dealing with changes to the plan so you have a structured approach for incorporating new requirements.
- Consider what working practices are helping you and what are leading to more confusion. Focus on the collaboration approaches that help you the most and ditch the habits that don’t serve you.
We’re not stuck with productivity problems. Your working style can be changed if you want it to change. Give yourself permission to be more organized – sometimes disorganization is a learned habit.
If you can get out of the habit and try to set yourself up with systems, then you can perhaps be more efficient with how you make things work.
Everyone works and thinks in different ways. Try different approaches, test and iterate, and ditch what doesn’t work for you.
This article first appeared on Rebel's Guide to Project Management and can be read here: 3 Productivity Saboteurs and What To Do About Them
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The Best and Worst US States for Project Managers in 2025 (after cost of living adjustments)
How far does a project manager’s paycheck really go across the U.S.? We crunched the numbers using data from ZipRecruiter, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and state-level cost of living indices to find out where project managers earn the most in real terms.
Spoiler: It’s not California or New York.
Hover over the interactive map below to see the average salary for project managers in each state.
Teal states are where your money goes the furthest -- these are the states paying over $110k as an average salary after the cost of living adjustment.
Yellow states have salaries of over $95k and the pink states are where you might find yourself stretched. Unsurprisingly, these are often the areas with the highest cost of living.
PM Salaries by State
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// Adjusted salary data (BLS adjusted) const salaryData = { "Alabama": 101540, "Alaska": 68129, "Arizona": 86528, "Arkansas": 125345, "California": 62090, "Colorado": 108931, "Connecticut": 82649, "Delaware": 109527, "Florida": 90902, "Georgia": 124861, "Hawaii": 60245, "Idaho": 84247, "Illinois": 115857, "Indiana": 117839, "Iowa": 121960, "Kansas": 123148, "Kentucky": 118418, "Louisiana": 100786, "Maine": 88846, "Maryland": 75717, "Massachusetts": 71611, "Michigan": 105981, "Minnesota": 107533, "Mississippi": 107070, "Missouri": 104199, "Montana": 107383, "Nebraska": 100664, "Nevada": 86637, "New Hampshire": 90188, "New Jersey": 90048, "New Mexico": 111481, "New York": 77739, "North Carolina": 98004, "North Dakota": 89173, "Ohio": 116391, "Oklahoma": 131679, "Oregon": 75479, "Pennsylvania": 86229, "Rhode Island": 99526, "South Carolina": 107288, "South Dakota": 98000, "Tennessee": 118627, "Texas": 99174, "Utah": 81714, "Vermont": 84603, "Virginia": 110660, "Washington": 87987, "West Virginia": 102703, "Wisconsin": 91868, "Wyoming": 118615, }; // Define a simple color scale using 3 custom bands function getColor(d) { return d > 110000 ? '#01a1ab' : // teal d > 95000 ? '#edc418' : // bright yellow '#D90ba2'; // hot pink }
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$${salary.toLocaleString()}`); }// Create the map const map = L.map('map').setView([37.8, -96], 4);
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// Load GeoJSON fetch("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PublicaMundi/MappingAPI/master/data/geojson/us-states.json") .then(res => res.json()) .then(geojson => { L.geoJson(geojson, { style: style, onEachFeature: onEachFeature }).addTo(map); });
Why adjusted salary tells the real story
When you see headlines like “Project Managers in New Hampshire earn over $103,000,” it sounds great. That is until you remember the cost of housing, food, and everything else which can knock over $10k off your salary in real terms.
That’s why we adjusted salary figures by each state’s cost of living index, revealing where project managers truly get the most bang for their buck.
Top 10 US states for project managers (adjusted for cost of living)
Rank State Adjusted BLS Salary 1 Oklahoma $131,679 2 Arkansas $125,345 3 Georgia $124,861 4 Kansas $123,148 5 Iowa $121,960 6 Tennessee $118,627 7 Wyoming $118,615 8 Kentucky $118,418 9 Indiana $117,839 10 Ohio $116,391
The worst states for project managers (when cost of living is factored in)
Despite high headline salaries, these states offer the lowest adjusted salaries for project managers:
- Hawaii: Highest cost of living by far, crushing purchasing power.
- California: Sky-high housing costs drag down take-home value.
- New York: Similar story: solid pay, poor return.
Regional variations are key
Southern and Midwestern states dominate the top of the list when adjusted for affordability.
East and West Coast salaries look impressive until you factor in cost of living. Then they drop down the ranks.
Where you live as a project manager can drastically impact your real earnings. In Hawaii, the high cost of living reduces the value of a typical PM salary by over $50,000, while in Oklahoma, lower expenses effectively boost take-home value by around $16,000. Across the U.S., the difference between the best- and worst-value states spans a staggering $66,000, proving that location isn’t just a lifestyle choice, it’s a financial one.
Project managers in affordable states may not earn the most on paper but their pay goes further, and today, that can really make a difference for working families.
What this means for employers and project managers
Are you a hiring manager? Consider promoting your location as a benefit. Remote project managers will get more value in lower-COL states.
Are you a job seeker? Don’t chase a big salary without considering what it buys you. A $95k role in Texas might be worth more than $115k in San Francisco. Look at the package as a whole as well as the cost of living in the local area and compare roles on a like-for-like basis.
Methodology
We used:
- Bureau of Labor Statistics data for state-level median salaries for Project Management Specialists (SOC 13-1082).
- ZipRecruiter to verify regional averages.
- MERIC cost of living index (2023), where 100 = U.S. average.
We then calculated:
Adjusted Salary = (BLS Median Salary ÷ COL Index) × 100This article first appeared on Rebel's Guide to Project Management and can be read here: The Best and Worst US States for Project Managers in 2025 (after cost of living adjustments)
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Project Status Reports Made Easy: Training
Project communication and working with stakeholders are the things I'm most interested in from the big wide world of project management – I even wrote a book about it.
As project managers, we spend around 80% of our time communicating in one form or another, and status reporting, or regular project reporting, is a chunk of that.
Is project reporting your favourite part of the week?
Thought not.
I know it might feel like a niche subject but project reporting is a big deal for me because it’s one of the best ways to communicate about your project. It’s where you can:
- fully control the message
- be transparent
- ask for decisions and help
- impress stakeholders and build confidence and credibility
- remind people what’s not going well and what is being done about it
- set expectations
- celebrate wins
and so much more!
On 22 April 2025 I’m offering a training session specifically focused to making sure your reports get read and that stakeholders take action.
If:
- You want to spend less time reporting all the stuff that has happened and gone and more time working on your project
- You are fed up with your sponsor and other stakeholders saying that they don’t know what’s going on, even if you are giving them plenty of information.
- You just feel that reporting on your project shouldn’t be this much of a headache!
Then this online training is going to be perfect for you.
Want to make project reporting easier? That's what this training is designed to do!
The training will be taught live via Zoom on 22 April 2025 at 7 pm UK time (British Summer Time), which is 2 pm EDT.
It includes:
- Project report templates in PowerPoint, Excel and Word
- Ebook on project reporting
- Multi-project combined template in Excel and Word
- And some other goodies!
Cost: US$20 / £16
The challenge with project reporting is that each company has different rules and approaches (or sometimes no standardization at all). In practice, what you do from one organization to the next might be different, which is perhaps why so much of what you read is vague and generic.
However, there are some fundamental principles and basic good practices that you can implement on any project.
And as this is a topic that comes up time and time again in my mentoring calls, I’ve put together a one-off training session about it.
After you've watched the training, you'll know:
- How to get people to contribute information for the report
- What to focus on so your reports are meaningful and useful
- How to understand what stakeholders need and how to give it to them
- The basics that must be right so stakeholders pay attention
- The proper way to use RAG statuses.
Why learn with me?
I'm the author of several project management books, including Shortcuts to Success and Managing Multiple Projects, and I've been leading business and tech projects for over 20 years. I'm an APM Fellow and a mentor, and I still work as a practitioner alongside my writing and training.
Buy now
Prefer to pay in UK Sterling? Do that here.
What past students say
FAQ
Here are some FAQ to help you decide if it's the right training for you.
What’s the time commitment?
Overall, the time commitment is about an hour, although as it’s a live session I’ll stay on as long as necessary until all the questions are done.
What’s the background of participants?
I expect most of the people who will be on the course with you will be early or mid-career professionals working in project delivery/project management roles.
Normally at my courses we get a good mix of people at various stages in their careers and from different industries.
What about if I work in an
Agile team?We'll be talking about weekly and monthly project reports that project managers have to create from templates or within their project management software.
We won't talk about burndown charts, information radiators or other
agile artifacts that are used for communication and reporting.If you work in an
agile team that primarily reports status through Jira tickets, for example, then you'll probably find this training does not relate particularly well to your project environment.However, the concepts of what makes a good report, how to share bad news, engaging stakeholders for decision making and so on are good fundamentals for anyone involved in project work.
The good thing is that project reporting skills are transferable into lots of scenarios, so even if you don’t need them on this project, you might need them on a future project.
Can I claim PDUs?
Yes. I will give you an attendance certificate that you can use as evidence for your portfolio. However, I am not a registered PMI authorized trainer.
Can I claim the cost through my company?
Yes. Get in touch and I can send you an invoice.
What’s the cancellation/refund policy?
I want you to be happy with the training. There is a 14-day refund policy.
When will you be running this training live again?
Not this year. I'm not sure yet what my training schedule looks like for next year.
This article first appeared on Rebel's Guide to Project Management and can be read here: Project Status Reports Made Easy: Training
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What to do when you’ve got too much work
Do you get to the end of the week and wonder what you’ve spent the days on? Your To Do list on a Friday might not look that much different to how it did on Monday, and yet you’ve barely had time to grab a coffee because you just haven’t stopped.
You’ve got so many balls in the air. However, juggling will only get you so far. There are strategies you can use to help you streamline your projects and combine work across stakeholders and teams. I talk about those in detail in my book, Managing Multiple Projects, which sets out a 5-part framework for leading projects in parallel and still leaving the office on time.
But what if you implement everything and still find there is too much to do?
At some point you need to acknowledge that your workload is simply too much for the amount of time that you’ve got in the day. But are you ready to admit that to yourself? Or to your boss?
Why people don’t admit to having too much work
There are often unwritten expectations of behaviour at work that make it hard to talk about workload. For example, people don’t want to give the impression that they can’t cope because they are nervous about what that says about them: maybe they aren’t capable of taking a promotion, or leading that next big project.
Maybe their colleagues will think they are slacking. There is also the stigma around talking about mental health issues and stress, burnout and overwhelm might be difficult to admit to.
Having too much work is often the result of your manager not knowing what you are spending your time on. They don’t know how you are using your hours, so they assume you can take on something else until you tell them that you can’t do anything more.
Let's talk about strategies for how to tell your boss that you’ve maxed out your workload.
1. Schedule a meeting
First, plan a meeting with your manager. You can use your regular one-to-one time, or book a separate conversation, whatever you feel would work best.
Make sure it’s at a time where you don’t have anything to rush on to so you can digest what is said and reflect on the conversation, especially if you are worried about bringing this topic up.
2. Prepare a list of your tasks
The discussion will be easier if it is evidence-based. Make a list of all your open projects and all the other things you do around the edges of those, like mentoring colleagues, organizing team events, training, team leadership, management activities or the general admin that just needs to get done.
Try to put a number of hours against each of the tasks. Allocate a priority to each project, based on your current understanding of how it ranks against your other work. If you have fixed delivery dates for any pieces of work, add those in too. This list represents your personal work portfolio: all the things you are responsible for delivering.
I’ve done this exercise with many people and it’s always eye-opening. Expect your list to be longer than you first thought!
3. Consider your options
Before the meeting, look through your list and see if you can think of any options that would enable you to hit the deadlines and meet the commitments you wrote down. For example:
- Delegate a project to someone else
- Ring-fence 20% of your week for team management activities
- Recruit a new colleague to share the workload
- Got on a time management training course
- Postpone a new project for two months while you close out three others.
There might be some simple answers to how you can make the most of your time, or you might have to get creative about it.
Your manager will be seeing your personal work portfolio for the first time, and will be looking to you for suggestions on how to deal with the problem you are telling them about.
4. Have the discussion
Talk to your manager. Tell them that you are concerned about your workload and would like some help prioritizing your tasks so you can make sure that the most important activities get enough of your time.
Be prepared with details about what you have done to improve your personal productivity and manage your projects effectively so you can evidence the changes you made and how they have not been enough.
Explain the steps you have taken to make sure you are working in the most efficient way. Use examples of how you have streamlined your work to keep your productivity levels high – this helps offset the concern that you are simply not organized enough or that you don’t use tried-and-tested techniques to save time at work.
Share your portfolio list with them. Talk them through all the things you do and how much time they take each week. Point out the activities you have ranked as top priority and ask if they agree.
Agree priority tasks and projects
The goal of the conversation is to agree on the priority tasks and projects, and to highlight that by working on them, you may not be able to keep everything else moving forward at the same time because there are only a certain number of hours in the week.
Discuss your options or recommendations for how best to address the workload. They might not be able to make a decision on the spot about certain choices, for example, hiring additional resources, but at least you have put the idea on their radar for consideration.
5. Monitor the situation
After the conversation, take action to put any agreed steps into practice. For example, reorganize your workload to focus on the things that were agreed as the top priorities. Report progress weekly, as this can also act as a reminder about what is not getting done.
Most importantly, monitor how you feel about your workload after a couple of weeks. Has the overwhelm gone? Have bad habits started to creep back in? Are you staying later?
And are you truly still working in the most efficient, streamlined way, using all the tools, strategies and tactics available to you to manage your portfolio of projects?
No time management techniques in the world will help you leave the office on time if you routinely have more to do than any human could naturally cope with. However, you need to be open to identifying that this is a problem and willing to take steps to do something about it.
Talking to your manager about workload might be awkward, it is your only reasonable choice.
Don’t struggle on because that leads to burnout. You are not a resource; you are a human who deserves a supportive work environment and a workload that doesn’t feel like it’s crushing you.
If you don’t feel that you can achieve that in your current role, it could be time to look for somewhere else to work.
This article first appeared on Rebel's Guide to Project Management and can be read here: What to do when you’ve got too much work
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10 Reasons Why Project Managers Need Risk Burndown Charts
If you're a project manager who wants to deliver successful projects while keeping risks under control, you, my friend, are in the right place.
Like many other project managers, I struggled with effectively communicating risk statuses to my stakeholders. My risk registers would become unwieldy documents that nobody read, mostly because they didn’t want to sift through the prioritized lists of risks for an idea on where we were when it came to closing out risks (their main concern).
And I knew I needed a simpler way to show that we were making progress. Which is where I started adapting risk burndown charts into my risk reporting.
What’s a risk burndown chart?
A risk burndown chart is a powerful visual tool that tracks your project's risk exposure over time.
Originally introduced by John Brothers in The
Agile Timesin 2004, it's a graph that plots the total risk severity on the y-axis against time on the x-axis, showing how risks are being "burned down" or reduced as your project progresses.Unlike traditional risk registers that list individual risks with their details, a burndown chart aggregates all risks into a single trend line, making it immediately clear whether your overall risk profile is decreasing, plateauing, or – worst case – increasing.
Burndown charts are typically associated with agile teams and sprint goals, but you can use the same techniques for risk.
This simple visual representation transforms complex risk data into an actionable insight that both team members and stakeholders can easily understand, allowing everyone to see at a glance if you're successfully mitigating risks (severity over time decreases) or if urgent attention is needed.
Example of what a risk burndown chart could look like. Although internal team members might like the details around your risks, those external stakeholders want a simplified visual on the risk picture.
And the risk burndown chart provides just that even if, like me, you are not working in an
agile environment.Not convinced? Here are 10 reasons why you and your project team need risk burndown charts starting today!
Reason #1: You'll gain visual clarity on risk exposure
As I showed above, it's easy to get lost in the details of a complex risk register. But it doesn't have to overwhelm you, not with risk burndown charts.
When you know how to visualize your project's overall risk exposure over time, you'll quickly understand whether your risk management efforts are working or not.
Risk burndown charts transform complex risk data into a simple downward-sloping line that anyone can understand at a glance. Instead of wading through spreadsheets and text-heavy reports, you and your stakeholders can immediately see if risk levels are decreasing as expected.
Reason #2: You'll make better-informed decisions
If you want to guide your project to success, you need to know where the dangers lie! Once you have clear visibility of risk trends, you can make informed decisions about where to focus resources and when to adjust your plans.
The chart plots cumulative project risk severity, so you can make choices about what to do next with that in mind.
Reason #3: You'll establish credibility with stakeholders
The best way to establish credibility is to demonstrate control of project risks. You’ll be showing cumulative risk exposure and what you are doing about it.
Learning this technique will help position you as a professional who takes risk management and project planning seriously.
If you're unsure where to start, begin by identifying your top ten project risks and plotting them on a simple chart. There are more tips for getting started at the end of this article.
Reason #4: You'll improve team accountability
With multiple team members responsible for different risk mitigation actions, it can be challenging to track progress effectively.
Risk burndown charts give you a roadmap for monitoring risk ownership and creating an impactful risk mitigation plan.
When you implement regular updates to your risk burndown chart, you'll improve accountability, increase transparency, and encourage proactive risk management across the entire team. And that translates to fewer surprises and smoother project execution.
Then, regardless of what unexpected events occur, you can respond effectively and maintain control throughout the project lifecycle.
Reason #5: You'll gain confidence in your risk management approach
Do you suffer from uncertainty about whether your risk assessment efforts are adequate? Do you worry about risk audits? You're not alone – every project manager does at times, so don't feel bad about it. Instead, take action!
The fastest way to overcome this is to let data guide your risk management approach.
When you gain a deeper understanding of how your risk exposure is trending over time, you'll feel more confident about your approach to managing the level of risk, and that increases stakeholder confidence in your leadership.
Here's what I mean: Lack of confidence is oftentimes due to lack of measurement. Risk burndown charts fill in that gap so you know exactly how effective your mitigation strategies are.
Reason #6: You'll save time
Time is a limited resource that we all wish we had more of. We can't create more time, but what we can do is prevent risks from stealing it.
When you apply risk burndown charts, you'll find your project’s risk management processes staying on schedule more consistently. This simple graph can show when you are running ahead or behind schedule with risks.
And risk owners will be motivated to provide their updates and stay off of the “Behind Schedule” list!
Reason #7: You'll allocate resources more effectively
When you use risk burndown charts to understand where your risk exposure is concentrated, you can start targeting your mitigation efforts more effectively.
Do you really need to spread your risk management resources evenly across all areas, or can you focus them where they'll have the greatest impact? Your team's time is valuable. If addressing minor risks isn't the best use of your resources, then use my risk burndown approach instead.
Optimizing resource allocation is sort of like finding hidden capacity; it's painless and immediately beneficial.
Reason #8: You'll improve stakeholder communication
That's the goal, right? But you don't want to overwhelm stakeholders with complex risk details. And ugh, who wants to? Here's a better way.
My risk burndown approach helps you communicate complex risk information clearly and effectively, by showing you how to translate technical risk details into visual trends that anyone can understand.
It all leads to better project sponsorship and support!
Reason #9: You'll predict problems before they occur
Maybe you're at that stage in your project management career where you're reacting to issues as they arise. We've all been there! It's likely some of them could have been prevented with better visibility.
My risk burndown technique will help you spot plateaus or upticks in risk exposure and learn how to identify problem areas before they impact your project.
You'll be able to predict potential issues, implement mitigation plans early, and maintain control without last-minute scrambling.
And you'll never have to explain why you didn't see a problem coming again.
Reason #10: You'll reduce project stress and improve work-life balance
You can make your work easier and more enjoyable when you use risk burndown charts to gain control over project uncertainties. That's because having a visual representation of risk reduction provides peace of mind that simply can't be achieved through conventional risk registers.
Once I stopped relying solely on communicating with stakeholders through risk registers and started visually showing risk trends, my "work" became less stressful and far more productive during status calls.
Next steps for incorporating this technique
If you’re convinced, here’s what you can do next.
- Identify and quantify risks: List all identified project risks in a risk register. Assign each risk a severity score based on impact and likelihood. Use a numerical scale (e.g., 1-5 or 1-10) to quantify overall risk exposure.
- Establish a risk baseline: Sum the severity scores of all risks at the start of the project to create a total risk exposure value. This will serve as your starting point for the risk burndown chart.
- Track risk mitigation progress: Regularly update the risk register to reflect mitigation actions taken, reassess remaining risks, and adjust severity scores accordingly. Reducing the impact or probability of a risk should result in a lower overall risk exposure value.
- Plot the risk burndown chart: Use a simple line graph to map total risk exposure (y-axis) against time (x-axis). Update the chart at regular intervals (monthly works well for longer projects) to visualize trends and ensure that risk levels are decreasing as expected.
- Analyze trends and take action: Review the burndown chart to spot patterns. A steadily declining risk curve indicates effective risk management, while plateaus or increases may signal new emerging risks or ineffective mitigation efforts that require additional action.
There you have it, 10 reasons you need risk burndown charts and some tips on getting started. When we invest in ourselves with the best risk management tools and techniques, positive and powerful results are inevitable.
Start using a risk burndown chart to communicate your risk picture to your senior stakeholders. If you do, you’ll start seeing more productive conversations and more engaged stakeholders during your status meetings!
This article first appeared on Rebel's Guide to Project Management and can be read here: 10 Reasons Why Project Managers Need Risk Burndown Charts