Agile as a Risk Management Strategy
Have you implemented any risk management in your agile projects?
Is it any different from the traditional risk mitigation strategies?
Agile is a risk management strategy. Its managed by elimination and by doing risky things early and often. Risk management is no longer just the project manager’s responsibility. We want the whole team to own risk management. We want to build it into the process and keep it visible to everyone, all the time.
- Risk 1. – Inherent schedule flaw – addressed via
- iterations/sprints,
- velocity/metrics,
- frequent releases,
- continuous prioritization
- Risk 2. – Requirements inflation or Scope creep – addressed via
- release planning,
- iteration/sprint planning,
- backlog grooming,
- continuous prioritization
- Risk 3. Employee turnover – addressed via
- pair programming,
- acceptance tests,
- unit tests,
- stand-ups,
- automation
- simple design
- Risk 4. Specification breakdown – addressed via
- release planning,
- business-driven development,
- user story map,
- continuous prioritization
- Risk 5. Poor productivity – addressed via
- pair programming,
- stand-ups,
- acceptance tests,
- unit tests
- Risk 6. Technical risks – addressed via
- evolutionary design,
- frequent releases,
- TDD and Refactoring
- Risk 7. Non-functional requirements – addressed via
- frequent releases,
- evolutionary design,
- ongoing performance testing
Also there is an ongoing Risk Management
- Daily Risk Management
- Stand-up meetings
- Pair Programming
- Dev-Hurdles
- Continuous Integration
- Periodic Risk Management
- Iteration/Sprint retrospectives
- Backlog grooming
- Code review/code walk-throughs
- Scrum of Scrum meeting
- Brainstorm new risks
- Per-Release Risk Management
- Review the story map & backlog
- Futurespective
- Product/Project Kick-off Risk Management
