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Scoring List Definitions

The four scoring lists — probability, frequency, severity and risk value — are what scoring resolves against. They are four separate screens, each maintained on its own.

The three dimension lists supply the numbers a formula multiplies. The risk value list supplies the bands a formula result lands in. They look alike and behave differently, which is why they are four screens rather than one with a type column.

The three dimension lists​

Probability, frequency and severity share one shape:

  • Code — issued from that list's own number template when left empty.
  • Name — the level as a person reads it: Very low, Low, Medium, High, Very high.
  • Value — the weight the formula reads. This is the field that matters.
  • Description — what the level means in practice. Worth filling in; it is what stops two assessors scoring the same situation two levels apart.
  • Active — inactive levels are no longer offered when scoring.

Each list sorts by value, and no two levels within one list may carry the same value. A 3 in severity and a 3 in probability are entirely unrelated and do not collide.

tip

Write the descriptions as observable tests rather than adjectives. "Once a month" is a description somebody can apply; "fairly frequent" is one they will interpret differently every time.

The risk value list​

The risk value list is the set of bands — the levels a scored risk is finally reported as. Its rows carry different fields:

  • Code / Name — Low, Medium, High, Critical, and whatever else your scale needs.
  • Band number — the number the risk level formula has to return in order to land on this band.
  • Colour — how the band is drawn on the scoring result label, in the register and on the record view.
  • Description — conventionally the score range this band covers.
  • Active — inactive bands are not offered for manual selection.

The band number is the join​

The risk level formula returns a number. The band that applies is the one whose band number equals it. Nothing else connects them — not the code, not the name, not the order.

Two consequences:

  • No two bands may declare the same band number. The second is refused, because a formula result matching two bands would have no answer.
  • Every number the active formula can return needs a band. If the formula can return 4 and no band declares 4, scoring a risk that lands there fails with a message rather than saving without a level.
caution

Reviewing this after changing a level formula is the one check worth doing by hand. Nothing warns you that a formula's range and a band list have drifted apart — the symptom is a scoring attempt that fails, or a band nobody ever reaches.

Colour is not decoration​

Each band's colour is used consistently on the scoring result label, in the risk register and on the record view. It is how a supervisor scanning two hundred rows finds the ten that matter, so the ramp should be monotonic — a green-to-red progression with no colour reused.

The default set ships as five bands numbered 1 to 5 with a green-to-red ramp, and every colour is editable.

Four lists, four sets of permissions​

Each of the four screens is permissioned separately. Being allowed to edit severity does not imply being allowed to edit the band definitions, and that separation is deliberate: the bands decide what the whole register reports, while a dimension level decides what one number means.

Excel import and export​

Each of the four lists has its own import template, named after the list and carrying only the columns that list uses. A row that names a different list is refused, and the rest of the file still loads.

Leave the code column blank and the code is issued from that list's own number template — which is also what keeps the four lists' counters and prefixes apart.

Adding a level to a live scale​

Adding a sixth level to a dimension is safe: existing records keep the level they named, and the new one is offered from then on.

Changing an existing level's value is not. Scores already stored are not recalculated — deliberately, so that rewriting a scale does not silently move assessments that were reviewed and approved on the old one. The consequence is two populations of records scored on different rules.

note

If you need a scale change to apply to existing risks, the mechanism is a revision per risk — a new round, scored on the new scale, with the old round preserved as the record of what was decided before.