Back in 2004 and 2005, one of my colleagues raised, on several occasions, his concerns with one of our legacy products, XXXX. He articulated both his reasoning and what he expected the consequences to be if these issues were not addressed. I did not share his assessment of the risk, but I could not refute it and I tried.

In late 2005, I had to write a report assessing the state of our products and associated risks. I did so and for product XXXX, I recorded my risk assessment and then I added a section explaining my colleague's. This had to be done because the organization needed to have as complete an assessment as possible. In adding this section, the report was more complete and provided senior management with a significantly better view of the risks associated with that product and this was due to my colleague's work.

I did one other thing in that section, I identified my colleague, by name. In doing so, I stated that he and I had differing opinions and that his assessment needed to be included and considered. I named him so that organization had access to the source of this differing assessment. This is an important point: with it my senior management colleagues knew who to contact to get more information without it being filtering by others (me) and if I should be hit by a bus, the organization knows who to turn to for knowledge about the risks associated with that product.

If I were to do it over again I would do it differently:

1. I would put more emphasis on everyone doing risk assessments as part of their responsibilities.
2. I would make the recording of risks assessments mandatory. While we as a group we did communicated risk assessments verbally we were not consistent as to who and when we raised them. Recording them makes them permanently available to everyone in the organization.
3. I would consult with my colleague about my intention to name him in the document, explaining my reasoning rather than having him learn about it by reading the document. This occurred when I had all of my development colleagues review the document before submitting it to senior management. He was shocked and upset to see his name in the document and only later came to see the benefit and the respect I was showing him.