How I do Risk Management

"How I do Risk Management"

Presenters: Chris Matts & Olav Maassen

Format: Formal

This experience report will explain my experience using the following three risk management techniques on a number of projects.

Real Options
Feature Injection/Business Analysis
Staff Liquidity

• Real Options are used to manage business investment risk. They are used to defer investment until more information is available. The attendees will learn why business analysis is needed to help manage business investment risk. We worked out how long a feature would take to implement so that we could defer non-critical features. This meant we had to do a certain amount of analysis to determine the time to implement a feature was required. Unimplemented analysis is considered waste in Lean.
• Real Options are used where there is uncertainty on the approach to take. They allow the team to build more than one approach. A standard plan and a plan “B”.
• Feature Injection is a set of business analysis techniques that generates a set of examples to drive a BDD/TDD process. The examples are used to communicate with the business about the scope of the project and ensure proper coverage. In effect, manage requirements risk.
• Staff Liquidity is a staff allocation approach that meant we always had the most experienced staff available to work on a high priority item at the drop of a hat. This was achieved by allocation based on “who could do the job with help” rather than “who could do the job”.