In project management, two distinct terms are often used. They are risk and issue. Some people get these confused, but for the most part, there are individual differences. Whenever you are categorizing items in a project, you will most likely do that through their actuality. This refers to the issues. Other times you may categorize items by their potentiality, which is known as the risk.
An issue is a type of risk. The risk itself may alter the project or the plan, but the issue doesn’t always change anything in regard to the project or plan. Even though it may seem that risk is more problematic, it is the issue that is more problematic because the risk has no result.