Issues are any event or known problem that will negatively impact your project’s schedule, scope, budget or quality. Issues differ from Risks in that Issues are 100% will or has happened whereas Risks may or may not happen with a probability less than 100% and greater than 0%. Risks that are not actively managed are more likely to become Issues.

At Project Charter time, you want to highlight the most severe impacting issues. Look specifically for the impacts in the following areas:

• Schedule – issues that will delay your project start, or impact key milestones and the target completion date.
• Scope – Issues that can prevent you from delivering the defined project scope
• Budget – Issues that can cause the project to go over the allowed budget
• Quality – Issues that will affect the quality of the delivered solution

In a subsequent post I will address Issue Management in detail.