We understand. You have multiple competing projects and no simple way of assessing the risk and benefit associated with each. Without this view, how can you decide which projects should go ahead? How do you decide which need more (or less) support from the PMO?  This template will help.

It’s a simple tool to assess the initial risk and benefit associated with a planned project. Benefit is plotted against risk to give you a view of where the project sits on the risk/reward spectrum. The criteria are pretty generic to ensure you can assess projects quickly, without getting too bogged down in the detail. The tool is useful when applied consistently across a series of potential projects to help compare them. It should also help PMOs assess the level of governance/support to apply. It can also be used to quickly assess in-flight projects to help you decide where to focus your scarce support and governance resources.

Change the definitions to fit your organization. If all your projects are coming out with the same risk score, then your portfolio needs narrower definitions. Feel free to add additional categories (Is the Project Manager experienced with the right skills and training, for example).

Click on the image below to download the template.

The sheet is designed to work with Excel 365, but the functionality should work fine with everything back to Excel 2003.

The chart is freely available to use, edit and abuse as you wish. All I ask is that if you like it, please share a link to this site via your blog or via social media.