It's a Risky Business

  Estimating  

Is your software project at risk?
Fact: It's far easier to screw up a software project than it is to get it right.  A recent Standish Group survey of 8,000 software projects found that the average project exceeded its planned budget by 90 percent and its schedule by 120 percent. According to several industry studies, fewer than half of software projects finish within their planned schedules and budgets. Research has shown that the majority of causes of schedule slips and cost overruns are  related to either project planning or monitoring.

You can do your projects a big favor by using software risk management to help you to anticipate and eliminate the root causes of project risks upstream before they become problems downstream.

What is software risk management?
The Software Engineering Institute once wrote that, "Today's risks are tomorrow's problems." According to Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, risk is defined as a possibility of loss or injury. In the software industry, we tend to define risk as exposure to harm or loss, as this includes not only the possibility of risks, but their impact as well. 

Software risk management can be defined as identifying, addressing and eliminating sources of risks before they become threats to the successful outcome of your projects. The key to effective risk management is not to avoid risks at all cost, but to ensure that the …

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