Managing Risk: Methods for Software Systems Development

By Elaine M. Hall and Ph.D. Hall, Elaine M.

Book Overview

"The increasing rate of technological change we are experiencing in our lifetime yields competitive advantage to organizations and individuals who are willing to embrace risk and the opportunities it... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201255928
• ISBN13: 9780201255928
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 374 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 0.8" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

This is "the book"!

Dr. Hall has done a superb work by fitting all the pieces that are needed for a successful software risk management. The way this book is explained is fairly comprehensive, going from a high level view, and later "drilling down" into important particular concepts. You can not go wrong following the "Managing Risk" methodology when developing your next project, especially under the current international regulations and standards for corporate governance...

Necessary for CMM 4 & 5, excellent general approach

Shows how to establish and manage a comprehensive risk management program. The basis of Ms. Hall's approach is called "P2I2", which stands for Process, People, Infrastructure and Implementation. Within these processes are subprocesses and tasks that, as a whole, will result in a risk management posture that is seamlessly integrated into a development project. Although this book is about managing software development project risks, the approach can be applied to any type of project, and can also be tailored to work in an operational or production environment. For example, implementation plans and change control in the operational environment require a risk management strategy, and the methods provided in this book will fill the void with no modification of the basic P2I2 approach.The process portion of P2I2 consists of 5-steps for managing risks: identify, analyze, plan, track and resolve. For those who manage projects in accordance with the Project Management Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) processes, the P2I2 on the surface appears different from the 6 steps set forth in the PMBOK. The key difference between the two is the PMBOK's risk management approach groups 5 processes into project planning and 1 into project control, while the P2I2 approach takes a more holistic view and incorporates risk management across the entire project life cycle. If you are striving for or working within the Capability Maturity Model at level 3 or above, then this book is essential and perfectly aligns. The book devotes a chapter to each of the processes, which clearly identifies the what's and how's of each. Note that the book does not cover advanced risk management techniques, such as probability curves - you will need to obtain this information elsewhere. It does give qualitative techniques, and gives quantitative methods to assess ROI for the risk management initiative itself, as well as other metrics to prove its effectiveness or lack thereof.Implementing the risk management infrastructure is covered in great detail and is a roadmap for making risk management an integral part of your project. It starts with developing a policy, defining standard processes to be employed, training your team and compliance verification and continuous improvement methods. This material spans five chapters, which sets the foundation for the next five chapters that address implementation of the program itself. These chapters cover establishing the initiative, developing the plan, tailoring the process to your environment, and assessing and controlling risks. The last two are excellent primers on their topics. The remaining five chapters are devoted to the people part of P2I2, and are broken down into stages, each discussed in its own chapter. The stages are: problem, mitigation, prevention, anticipation and opportunity. Each is thoroughly discussed and taken together these last chapters clearly show roles, issues and factors, and how human res

A great resource on project risk management

An excellent resource. It presents very practical methods for project manager who wants to mange project risk proactively.

Impressive

This book is impressive and contains a lot of useful detail and original thought. Anyone interested in risk will enjoy and learn from the book as I did. It does tackle "quantified objectives" much better than other texts.

An exemplary work on managing software development risks!

If you're a software development manager, project manager, or technical lead then you'll want to incorporate this risk management discipline into your activities. The author writes with incredible cogency, fitting the pieces together so wonderfully that I'm intellectually stimulated just reading the text. Hall has revealed my heretofore short-sightedness concerning risk. I am indebted to her for a fine work that I believe is certain to enable me to spearhead more successful software development projects.