What is risk management in ROAM?
The ROAM risk management model is a collaborative and proactive way to scale Agile and risk management in large organizations. Traditionally, risk management can feel fragmented and inconsistent, with risks often addressed reactively rather than proactively. Teams may lack clear ownership of risks, leading to overlooked issues and a general lack of alignment. ROAM addresses these challenges by providing a structured framework where risks are categorized, prioritized, and assigned clear ownership—ultimately ensuring proactive management and alignment across teams.
For example, imagine a software company is preparing for a major product launch, facing risks like security vulnerabilities, integration issues, and tight deadlines. In the past, unmanaged risks led to delays and post-release problems. This time, the team uses a ROAM board during Program Increment (PI) planning to tackle these challenges head-on. They resolve a security issue, assign a team member to monitor third-party API performance, and accept that delays in a software update may be unavoidable. For other risks, they create robust mitigation strategies, such as setting up automated tests. At the end of the process, the team has a clear plan, turning uncertainty into manageable tasks. This is the power of ROAM risk management: By systematically addressing and categorizing risks, teams can prioritize and track mitigation efforts, ensuring that no potential threats are overlooked and that there is accountability throughout the project.
What is a ROAM board?
A ROAM board is a digital or physical tool used to examine the likelihood and impact of risks. This framework helps teams decide which risks are low priority versus high priority and does a great job of making risks visible. With access to a shared board, your team can collaboratively spot and flag risks, ensuring that no potential issues are ignored or overlooked.
A ROAM board visually organizes risks into the four aforementioned categories: Resolved, Owned, Accepted, and Mitigated. Typically structured as a grid or Kanban-style board, each risk is placed in the appropriate column based on how it is being handled. Then, during PI planning, teams use the board to collaboratively assess risks and assign them to the right category.
SAFe and Risk Management
There is no silver bullet solution to scaling your risk management across the various levels introduced by the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®). SAFe defines a set of roles, responsibilities, and guiding principles for everyone within an organization following agile practices. When it comes to risk management, these roles and processes are crucial for ensuring that risks are addressed at the appropriate level—whether at the team, program, or portfolio level.
At the team level, risks are typically managed during PI planning, when teams identify potential risks that could impact their work. At this stage, the ROAM framework is particularly helpful, as it enables teams to categorize each risk to make sure each one is effectively addressed. For larger programs, risks that affect multiple teams or the Agile Release Train (ART) must be escalated and managed at the program level, ensuring that teams aren’t duplicating efforts in managing the same risks. Portfolio-level risks, which can impact the long-term vision, are addressed by leadership through ongoing Project Portfolio Management (PPM) activities.
By defining clear roles and processes for risk management, and by using tools like ROAM for structured risk handling, SAFe enables organizations to scale risk mitigation efforts while maintaining visibility and accountability across all levels. This structured approach helps ensure that no risks are overlooked and that every risk is properly managed within its context.
What does ROAM stand for?
Across all levels, the ROAM board is a widely used tool in scaling risk management under SAFe. It is used during PI planning to identify and analyze risks and issues that could prevent the team from successfully achieving its goals. To make sure all the risks are covered, the goal of this technique is to Resolve, Own, Accept, or Mitigate all risks. By using these four buckets to categorize threats, it is much easier to align teams on how to properly handle any given identified risk.
- Resolved: Participants can agree that the risk is no longer a concern and can therefore be disregarded.
- Owned: Each and every risk that is not solved right away during PI planning must be taken on by a team member who will be responsible for making sure the risk is managed.
- Accepted: Certain risks pose a potential problem or cannot be reasonably mitigated. Teams on the ART have to fully understand the details of these risks before accepting them.
- Mitigated: A plan is devised to reduce either the probability, or the impact of all identified risks.
Unlike the other categories, “Owned” is not a final state—ownership alone doesn’t imply any mitigation plan or action. Therefore, it’s essential to establish follow-up procedures to ensure these risks are actively managed and addressed.
Once work has started, there's a good chance more risks will surface. Therefore, executing the ROAM process should become a continuous practice to make sure new and changing risks are taken into account and adequately managed.
Potential issues that are solved on the team's ROAM board don't need to be transferred onto the program’s ROAM board. Mitigating identified risks follows a process similar to any Agile task but requires ongoing monitoring to ensure that ROAM goals are achieved.
The main benefit of using a ROAM board is comprehensive risk coverage. After a ROAM session, teams receive clear commitments from members to address all identified risks, with specific mitigation plans in place. Additionally, moving the ROAM process into a collaborative risk management tool enhances cooperation across distributed teams and ensures thorough documentation.
Benefits of ROAM risk management
ROAM risk management offers a practical, collaborative approach for teams to manage risks in Agile environments, especially within SAFe. By creating visibility and structure, ROAM helps teams proactively address risks before they become roadblocks. Key benefits include:
- Enhanced collaboration through shared responsibility for risk management
- Clear ownership and accountability for resolving or managing risks
- Improved transparency, making it easier to track progress and mitigation efforts
- Structured prioritization of risks, ensuring critical issues are addressed first
- A proactive approach that reduces the chance of unexpected delays
By implementing the ROAM risk management model, teams can feel empowered to navigate uncertainty with confidence, ensuring that risks are systematically managed and critical projects stay on track.
Collaborative Risk Management
The approach is comprehensive, but executing a fully scaled ROAM risk management model can be a daunting challenge. To put these methods into practice, developers rely on Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions for structure and capabilities that make collaborative risk management achievable even at the largest enterprise scale.
Integrated ALM tools support risk management by establishing a central, shared development platform for all contributing stakeholders. By managing and providing insights into all phases of product delivery, ALM tools like Codebeamer help incorporate mature Agile risk management with processes that are scalable across the enterprise. These platforms streamline communication, track risk ownership, and provide real-time updates on mitigation efforts, ensuring that risks are consistently managed and that the entire organization is on the same page. Ultimately, these solutions not only mitigate risks but also empower teams to innovate with confidence. By prioritizing proactive risk management, organizations can enhance product quality, reduce time to market, and protect their reputation—making the difference between surviving and thriving in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Scaling Risk Management in Agile
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