Outsourcing Risk Register
This is a practical guide to building a risk register for an outsourcing project — the living log of risks with scores, owners and responses, adapted to the realities of outsourcing a function to an external provider.
What a Risk Register is
A risk register is the living log of risks with scores, owners and responses. For the full concept and how it works in general, see Risk Register. On an outsourcing project it plays the same role, tuned to this kind of work.
Why it matters for an Outsourcing project
Outsourcing projects live or die on outsourcing a function to an external provider. A well-built risk register gives the team a shared, explicit reference for exactly that — reducing ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and making problems visible early enough to act. Skipping it, or doing it generically, is how outsourcing projects drift into avoidable delay and cost.
What to include
- Risk description and category
- Probability and impact
- Risk score
- Owner
- Response and trigger
Outsourcing-specific considerations
Tailor the risk register to the risks that most often derail outsourcing projects:
- Knowledge transfer
- Service-level definition
- People impact
Example
On a real outsourcing project, the risk register would be shaped by outsourcing a function to an external provider. In particular, it should explicitly account for the project’s biggest risks — knowledge transfer, service-level definition, people impact — rather than treating them as afterthoughts.