3.1 Project Risks

3.1.1 Unavailability of Skilled Staff

3.1.2 Late Delivery

3.1.3 Lack of Experience

3.1.4 Change in Requirements

3.1.5 Incorrect Size Estimation

3.1.6 Hardware Failure

3.1.7 Client Fail / Unwilling to Participate

3.1.8 Deviation From Software Engineering Standards

3.2 Risk Table

3.3 Overview of Risk Mitigation, Monitoring And Management

3.0 Risk Management

Risk management is a major and important management activity of software project management due to the inherent uncertainties which most projects face. As for this project, we try to identify potential risks and their impact on the project schedule, resources and quality of the product. Analysis also had been done on each identified risk and the results are presented in table below.

The goal of risk management is to assist the project team in managing and monitoring all the possible risk related to this project through the use of appropriate strategies.

3.1 Project Risks

3.1.1 Unavailability of Skilled Staff

This is one of the major risks that may arise in most of the software projects and it is categorized under the category of people risk. It is concern with the ability and contribution of the team members to create the working product. If the required skilled staffs in a specific area such as programming are not available during the development, it may give impact to the overall software production such as late delivery and low quality product. For this project, it has been identified as the risk with the highest probability of occurring.

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3.1.2 Late Delivery

This is the risk concern with the incapability of the development team to produce the desired product that meet the deadline. Late delivery of the final system is categorized under the business impact risk and it has been identified as one of the risk of our project that has a high probability of occurrence. During the project development, delay may occur due to the inadequate resources or the unavailability of the required staff.

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3.1.3 Lack of Experience

This is another type of people risk. The team members’ experience gained from past project may not be applicable in this project. It is because this project is quite difference in nature and more complex as compare to the past projects. As a result, some slippage may occur, as the team will have to do a lot of research for any uncertainties found during the project's life cycle.

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3.1.4 Change in Requirements

Most customers don't really know what they want as the requirements for the software, thus they may want to change the project's requirements at unacceptable times. This could be early or very late in the project's life cycle. If this happen, it will affect the whole project planning and may require rework for some of the process activities. In addition, it may cause major slippage to the project schedule. The development team has take this customer risk into consideration when identify the potential risk.

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3.1.5 Incorrect Size Estimation

Since this is the first time for the development team to work with a project that is quite big and complex, the team's estimation on lines of code (LOC) may be inaccurate. Even if the estimation may be quite accurate, the degree of confidence that the development team will have in the estimated size will be fairly low. Due to this factor, product size risk has been identified as one of the potential risk that may arise during the development of this project.

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3.1.6 Hardware Failure

This is a risk concern with technical issues and is an unexpected event which may occur during the software development. It may cause loss on data which is essential to the development team. The cost associated with hardware failure may be crucial. As a result, this risk needs to be monitor continuously during the project development.

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3.1.7 Client Fail / Unwilling to Participate

This is categorized as customer risk that concern with the client’s willingness of helping the development team in developing or producing the desired system. Client involvement in the project is very essential especially at the early stage of software development. If client feel reluctant to participate or spend time in the project, this may give impact to the project progress. Furthermore, the project may be failed because the user requirements are not thoroughly defined. The development team has identified that there is a probability where the clients are not willing to participate either in all or some of the process activities.

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3.1.8 Deviation From Software Engineering Standards

This is one of the process risks that have been identified for this project although it is unlikely to occur. Process risk involves risk regarding product quality. If the development team fail to follow a standard process for the software development or the work conducted on a project do not conforms with software engineering standards defined by the organization, the software produced may not achieve its initial goals or fails to fulfill the client’s need.

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3.2 Risk Table

The following table describes the risks that may arise in this project. Each risk is group into a particular category and its probability as well as the impact on the project, product or business is listed below.

Description for Categories

BU – Business Impact Risk
CR – Customer Risk
ER – Employee Risk
PI – Process Risk
PS – Product Size Risk
TI – Technical Issues

3.3 Overview of Risk Mitigation, Monitoring And Management

Risk mitigation, monitoring, and management (RMMM) help us determine any possible major risks prior to its occurrence and assist the team in developing a strategy for dealing with risks.

>> Risk Mitigation
During this project tracking activity, the team will have to develop strategies if a predicted risk does, in fact, occur. The team will develop a specified method to handle a risk. This is to ensure that if a risk does occur, there is predetermined path to follow when attempting to manage the risk. We have to make sure that risk aversion steps defined for the risk are being properly applied. The best strategy of course is for certain risks to have preventive measures devised for them. Another job will be to collect information that can be used for future risk analysis and attempt to trace the origin throughout the project.

>> Risk Monitoring
During the risk monitoring, factors that may provide an indication will be supervised to check whether the risk is becoming more or less likely. We will also monitor the effectiveness of risk mitigation steps we have developed.

>> Risk Management
In the case where the mitigation efforts have failed and that the risk become a reality, we will manage the risk according to the best course of action we have defined during the mitigation process.

For more information, please refer the Risk Mitigation, Monitoring and Management (RMMM) document in APPENDIX.