An Agile Risk Approach

John D’Entremont, PMP, is a program manager with over 15 years experience in training, managing training teams and designing materials to enhance the skills of managers and executives.

  Agile   Risk Management   ProjectsAtWork  

Any project can run into unforeseen risks. Managing these risks can take some time, but it is well spent. An Agile approach can help because the tenets of risk management are already built into the process. Here are some tips and considerations.

Properly assessing and strategizing for potential project risks allows you to mitigate some of the challenges that can jeopardize the success of your project. The objective should be the creation of a strategy that will outline the steps that the team will take to evaluate and monitor these risks. 

While Agile risk management is not entirely different from that of traditional risk management, it does not call for a formal plan. This is because the tenets of risk management are already built into the process. In the Agile environment, the project team works together to identify, assess, and monitor risks on a daily basis, as part of team meetings. Notes from this risk portion of the meeting should be compiled and tracked in a way that is visible to all team members. This can be done on something as basic as flipcharts, or as detailed as a project wiki.

During these sessions, the team should consider (among other things) the following questions regarding the risk:

What are our assumptions? This is a great way to level-set, and ensure that everyone understands how the risk could come into play. It can also validate …

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