Any business operation is likely full of negative and positive risks that can spawn at any moment of its development. Companies must be aware of them to understand internal processes and the way team members and employees can improve deliverables and general results for the next project.

In this context, managing projects and operations require you to use a RAID Log, or risk register, to identify the aspects mentioned above and track progress when carrying out actions and solutions. 

With this document, you can easily manage actions destined to mitigate risks and achieve more accurate deliverables. If you're desired to lead a more prestigious and effective company, keep reading this article to know everything about RAID log.

A RAID log is a project management tool that project managers, incumbents, stakeholders, and businesses use to record all the inconveniences and potential issues during the project progress. It’s also a great tool that tracks risks and proposes solutions to solve problems. 

Recording this data allows team members to better understand and organize their current tasks and the overall project. At the same time, it lets you build more accurate strategies for future projects to avoid falling into the same errors and achieve project success without relevant problems. 

In other words, a raid log is an effective tool to identify, track, and record issues during the project lifecycle to propose solutions in the subsequent stages and to avoid these appearing in future projects.

However, because the RAID log method can be simple and adaptable, some other applications include:

• Business processes;

• New and established businesses;

• Various levels or departments within a business;

• Personal projects.

RAID stands for Risks, Actions, Issues, and Dependencies

RAID acronym stands for the following:

R Stands for Risks

Most RAID logging involves identifying and tracking risks that may appear after the project begins. With previous experiences, you should be able to identify and track risks in advance and forecast its possible impact in any project planning phase. 

This project document should comprise a list mentioning all the risks and the probability for each. Remember that your team's actions depend on the likelihood and the degree of impact. 

It would help if you also gave each risk to a specific owner in charge of catching the threat before it becomes a relevant issue and presents possible mitigation actions. The owner must note risks and related factors in the RAID logs to perform better risk management in the subsequent stages.  

A Stands for Actions or Assumptions 

Actions or Assumptions are essential activities for the successful development of the mitigation plan. Each action should also have an owner that ensures the action is being managed for the project team. 

When summarizing the project's progress for a specific period, it is important to include a chart depicting all the actions that have been completed since the project's initiation.

Charting actions is relevant since, after completing activities, new risks that may affect the project plan might appear. This practice will help you recap and look back to see what processes and stages the team can improve.   

I Stands for Issues

Using a raid log involves the identification and tracking of all the issues that arise throughout the project's development. Problems can range from resource constraints to management issues.

Remember that identifying issues also involves noting the plan to deal with the problem, which team member will take the initiative, what is the plan review, how they track errors, and how these will be marked as resolved. 

D Stands for Decisions or Dependencies

This section corresponds to a list of all the decisions that have been made and that need to be made over the project workflow. List the owners' decisions to mitigate risk and improve efficiency and productivity.

Recapping

Think of RAID logs as a document where you record and organize all the project information about risks, issues, actions, methodologies, and decisions you or your manager made during the project.  

Besides, it's fully recommended that the RAID log is kept up to date whenever you can. This practice will give more control over current procedures and issues throughout the project. You must also continuously share the issues log with other stakeholders, such as investors, managers of different departments, or team members interested in knowing potential problems.

A RAID Log is an important tool for mitigating risks and establishing strategies to ensure the current workflow of events. A detailed record of possible risks and potential solutions and decisions brings the following benefits to your organization:

• It gives all the team members an overview of the project's goals and expectations. Since the project starts, employees, managers, and other stakeholders must be sure about the final objectives of the project. This way, they can align themselves with these goals and lead their effort to achieve these objectives. A RAID log helps them meet risks and issues that threaten main goals. 

• It estimates the potential risks. A RAID record's main purpose and core is to identify and track issues that sometimes appear unexpectedly and measure the impact of the potential problems emanating from these risks. It helps members to prepare the team for facing these problems.  

• It facilitates tracking information during the development of the project. Risks and challenges may change in impact and likelihood over time. A document of this nature makes it easier to check which components are at risk and what stages can be slowed down, leading to efficiency issues.  

• It allows you to catalog data easily.  As a RAID log is an excellent tool to organize information into four differentiated categories, you can easily catalog situations appearing during the project in the appropriate category. Being clear about all sorts and their characteristics, stakeholders can go to a quadrant and identify and evaluate a particular component.  

• It helps you to document all decisions in one place. All your choices, small or big, will be efficiently gathered in a single document that team members can check to elucidate questions, actions, and dependencies.

A RAID log can be a simple physical document integrating four quadrants for each part of the acronym. Still, it’s better if each member can access the record online, whatever they are. To properly build a RAID log, follow the next steps:

• Meet the best way to present your RAID log.

• Treat the initial risks, assumptions, issues, and dependencies. 

• Update the record periodically as the project progresses.

• Extract conclusions from the process.   

The templates we provide below are customizable documents you can edit using MS Excel or Word. If you don’t have MS Office suite on your machine, you can get the Microsoft Office Professional Plus Key Retail Global at an affordable price on our website.

You can easily manage these tools and documents and apply solutions to issues that occur over time. Using the proper software exposed below and MS apps will contribute to minimizing risk and efficiency problems. 

Basic RAID Log Template

Download it from Smartsheet.

This simple file easily organizes RAID categories for each project’s tasks, features, and events. This document contains a proper section to describe action items according to their nature and pinpoint their impact on the project’s schedule or deliverables. This template also allows to assign an owner in charge of addressing or resolving the item, and identify their priority. Customize this template to place all your project items and complete your project successfully. 

Free RAID Log Excel Template

Download it from Stakeholdermap.

Like the previous template, this corresponds to a spreadsheet document with all the necessary categories and sections describing the four types of any RAID log. This document contains columns for note dates, areas, priorities, deadlines, and current progress of all components. Contrary to other templates you can find on the Internet; it contains different layouts for four categories: the risks section, the action section, the issue section, and decisions, dropdowns, and useful resources. This template is a great file to monitor the problems as they arise in the log.

Simple RAID Log Template

Download it from Citoolkit.

This file corresponds to a spreadsheet you can use and modify to include additional sections. This way, you can expand its possibilities according to your demands. For example, you may add columns to include other data, such as the causes of potential risks and possible solutions when issues pop up.

Project Raid Log Template

Download it from Template.net.

This document is a well-formatted template containing all the necessary categories to describe RAIDs and their impact on the project’s development. This is a straightforward document that the project manager of your team uses to record and assess project risks, as well as determine the necessary actions to ensure the project's progress.

Time-consuming activities and the loss of resources are two primary disadvantages you can avoid using a RAID log. In fact, identifying risks and issues will boost your team’s efficiency, helping you to save time and better manage resources.

As a paper trail of your project, a RAID record is the right document for decision-making and easy referencing in current and future developments since it integrates all the edges that can present highly-likely risks and issues.