Maybe Robert ‘Tablet Maven’ Scoble’s influence isn’t just confined to Channel 9 – Channel 5’s revamped Sky-powered news programmes feature presenter Kirsty Young toting a Tablet PC as a portable alternative to an autocue…
Archive for 5 January 2005
The One Minute Risk Assessment Tool is a fascinating article from the ACM, aka the Association Of Computing Machinery – the US equivalent of the British Computer Society (although with a name that makes them sound even more like a collection of pocket-protected data processing managers).
It takes a look at the types of risk that face the typical software development process, and ranks the relative importance of each related to its impact on the success – or otherwise – of a software development project. What’s fascinating is that the findings are completely counter-intuitive – whereas we all think that it’s constantly-shifting requirements that are the primary cause of project failures, in actual fact the single most important factor is using an inappropriate methodology. That made my eyes open.
Attempting to freeze moving project requirements will do nothing more than create a delusion of risk reduction
Although the article itself isn’t the snappiest piece of journalism ever written, that’s more than mitigated by the One Minute Risk Assessment Tool – a simple, pointy-haired-boss-proof calculation that gives an overall project risk score by assessing each of six project characteristics and weighting them according to the findings of the research. The end-result is a project risk score that can act as an early-warning of future problems. It also considers the project manager’s sphere of influence – which of the risk factors is it actually possible to control? While it’s always dangerous to rely on a single checklist as the definitive measure of a project’s risk, it’s certainly a useful tool to get stakeholders thinking about it – particularly if risk is a concept that’s open to misinterpretation.
And whether you agree with the conclusions or not, the article also has the best quote I’ve yet to see on the subject of risk, something that should be carved in stone and displayed prominently in view of every project manager who’s charged with running a software project:
Only risk that is underappreciated and unmanaged has the power to surprise.
Neil’s must be bored: he’s written a Random Harry Potter Book Title Generator…
