The Mastery of Risk distinguishes modern times from the past: By understanding and measuring risks and their consequences, modern humans no longer perceive the further as a whim of the Gods and thereby have been empowered to transform their world [1]
The software domain is immature in the mastery of risk. A non-trivial number of IT projects are canceled. Many go over budget and over schedule. A Root Cause analysis of failed IT projects shows there were early warning signs of trouble, long before the failure showed up.
Here are the Dominate Dozen Early Warning Signs of IT Project Failure
People Related Risks
- Lack of top management support
- Weak project leadership
- No stakeholder involvement and/or participation
- Team members lacy needed knowledge of skills
- Subject matter experts are unavailable when needed
Process Related Risks
- Lack of documented requirements or success criteria, starting with the needed Capabilities
- No change control process
- Ineffective planning or management of the needed work
- Communication breakdown among the stakeholders
- Resources assigned to higher priority work
- No business case for the project
A fundamental Critical Success Factor for IT project success starts with Risk Management
Risk Management is How Adults Manage Projects - Tim Lister
The management of risk starts with the identification of the reducible and irreducible uncertainties that creates risk. Managing in the presence of these uncertainties requires making estimates of the probabilistic or statistical behaviors of the sources of these uncertainties, the properties of the risk created by the uncertainties, and the effectiveness of the handling processes to reduce the risk or provide margin to protect the project from the risk
[1] "Early Warning Signs of IT Project Failures: The Dominate Dozen," Leon A. Kappelman, Robert McKeeman, and Lixuan Zhang, Information Systems Management, Fall 2006.
