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There is a major replacement/upgrade project in flight. The project touches on a number of existing systems that are not being upgraded some of which have business as usual issues e.g. lack of support, unauthorized installations, etc.
It is unknown what impact this may have on the delivery of the project.
Should the issues with the existing systems not being upgraded be captured as either as risks or issues?
If no, why?
If yes, why?
I'd say it is a risk because of the possible lack of maintenance and support. For example, lack of support has a high risk on delivery because you have to figure out the solution with small or non existing domain know-how.
This confusion about whether something is an issue or risk is a HUGE waste of time. It comes down to how one structured the event in one's mind. Are you focusing on the current problem being experienced or are you focused on the future? Are you being tactical or are you being strategic? Are you trying to cure the high blood pressure, the obesity, the high cholesterol, or are you trying to mitigate the heart attack and early death?
As you can clearly see, issues and the risks are linked. So where you log it and how you communicate it and how you work it all depends on where your focus is. If you are the leader, your focus is likely downstream, in the future, where strategy lives. Risk. If your a worker, your focus is likely here and now, getting to the end of the week, completing a task or sets of tasks. Issue.
But at the end of the day, where it is logged doesn't matter. What matters is you are mitigating the heart attack by curing the BP, obesity, cholesterol, etc.
I strongly support David's approach: the whole discussion isn't worth your time. It's something that everyone - specially, stakeholders - must be aware of. I'm just not 100% sure if it's possible to have an item as a risk for some and an issue for others - my gut feeling says that if something is a risk... it's a risk for everyone, top to bottom. But this vision is highly dependent on your environment.
Nevertheless, entering into the formalism of using risk or issue, I'd say that I'd consider a risk something I'm not sure would happen or impact the project. After all, an issue is a materialized risk.
So, you have the answer on your question:
It is unknown what impact this may have on the delivery of the project.
So, as it stands, it's a risk. Once there's a confirmation of impact, it becomes an issue.
There seems to be a lot of confusion on Risk and Issue. My simple understanding is:
A risk is an uncertain future event that has a positive or negative impact on the project objectives, should it occur (or business activities if you are considering BAU) [mathematically probability from 1-99%]
An issue on the other hand is something that has already happened [Probability=100%]
However, an issue or recurring issue(s) can lead to a potential risk such as single failure or repeated failures to patch/update a computer software might lead to the potential risk event of a hacker penetrating/hacking the computer/system/organization which will result in ........
