Name the Stage Most Likely to Fail for Each Initiative

The risk identification worksheet

Companion to The Code Takes Care of Itself · Updated 2026-09-29

For each active initiative, name three things:

  1. The stage of the Completion Loop most likely to fail first.
  2. The cost if it does.
  3. Who is accountable for catching the failure before a customer does.

Rank by likelihood times cost, not by which risk sounds most dramatic in the room. Review monthly. If a risk hasn’t moved in two reviews, you either fixed it or ignored it, and the worksheet should make you say which.

Try this with AI.

“Here is my risk worksheet with the initiative names stripped out. Rank the risks by likelihood multiplied by cost, then argue against my ranking: which risk am I over-weighting because it’s vivid, and which am I ignoring because it’s boring?”