Another thought regarding my earlier post this week on the lipstick chart. We use this chart in a number of different ways and it is useful in expressing the relative importance of key business activities. As discussed previously the chart is initially used to capture quick judgements on criticality which can later be refined during an impact analysis.
One aspect the lipstick chart doesn’t capture is the notion of risk although there is clearly a number of ways this can be shown. It is important to point this out as the business frantically turns its attention onto the critical activities within the business. As pointed out in this previous post about risk location, due to the natural behaviour of an organisation the biggest risks are likely to be in the amber priority activities and not in the red critical activities. As I stated previously we continue to gather metrics on this behaviour. Our initial assessment is that an organisation’s natural behaviour is to reinforce areas which it knows to be critical while leaving those that it knows to be non-critical. That of course leaves a gap in the middle where activities exist which the organisation knows are important but is unsure how important. So during a risk assessment it may very well be the case that more value is delivered when focussing on the amber activities.
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