Technical Documentation
The goal of most software development and software engineering projects is to be distinctive—often through new features, more efficiency, or exploiting advancements in software engineering. Any software project executive will agree that the pursuit of such opportunities cannot move forward without risk.
Because risks are painfully real and quite prevalent on all software projects, it’s critically necessary that stakeholders work hard to identify, understand, and mitigate any risks that might threaten the success of a project. For projects that have time and cost constraints, our experience shows most clearly that successful software development efforts are those in which risk mitigation is a central management activity.
Very simply, a risk is a potential problem. It’s an activity or event that may compromise the success of a software development project. Risk is the possibility of suffering loss, and total risk exposure to a specific project will account for both the probability and the size of the potential loss.
Guesswork and crisis-management are never effective. Identifying and aggregating risks is the only predictive method for capturing the probability that a software development project will experience unplanned or inadmissible events. These include terminations, discontinuities, schedule delays, cost underestimation, and overrun of project resources