Issue & Risk Tracker
A combined Excel workbook for tracking both issues and risks in a single tool. Features probability/impact scoring, risk heat map, mitigation planning, and issue escalation tracking.
What’s inside
- Risk heat map with probability × impact scoring
- Issue escalation and resolution tracking
- Blank Template + Filled Example
About this download
The Issue & Risk Tracker is a combined Excel workbook for identifying, scoring, managing and closing both risks (things that might go wrong) and issues (things that have gone wrong) across a project or programme. Treating risks and issues in a single tool, with a shared scoring model and shared review cadence, is the approach recommended by PMI, PRINCE2 and most enterprise PMO frameworks because it prevents the common failure of a known risk silently becoming an unmanaged issue.
The risk tab captures every field a mature risk register needs: risk ID, description, category (technical, commercial, resource, regulatory, external, reputational), probability (1–5), impact (1–5), auto-calculated inherent risk score, mitigation actions, residual probability, residual impact, residual score, owner, review date, trigger conditions, and status (open, mitigated, accepted, transferred, closed). A visual 5×5 heat map, built from formulas, updates automatically as scores change so leadership can see at a glance which risks are trending into the red zone. The issue tab mirrors this structure but replaces probability with "certainty" (it has already happened), adds an escalation path and a target resolution date, and tracks days-open so stalled issues are visible.
This tracker is used by project managers, PMO leads, risk officers, audit teams, compliance functions, steering committees and boards. It is appropriate for IT transformation programmes, construction and engineering projects, clinical trials, regulatory-compliance initiatives, M&A integration work and any multi-quarter internal programme where the consequence of not tracking risks actively is material.
A recommended rhythm: review the top 10 risks at every steering committee, refresh the full register monthly, add any new risk within 48 hours of identification, and retire closed risks to an archive sheet rather than deleting them so the audit trail is preserved. Assign every risk to a specific person — "the programme" is not an owner.
Inside Vizually, risks and issues become visual cards linked to the initiatives they threaten, so when a risk trends up the leadership team can see exactly which parts of the plan are exposed and act before the risk becomes an issue.