SE 477 Software and Systems Project Management

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SE 477 Software and Systems Project Management

• Dennis Mumaugh, Instructor
• dmumaugh_at_cdm.depaul.edu
• Office OHare, Room 113
• Office Hours Wednesday, 430-600

2
Administrivia

• Comments and feedback
• Assignment 3
• Develop a risk management plan for the software
  development infra-structure (Identify risks
  estimate risk probability and impact identify
  potential for risk mitigation identify potential
  risk responses)
• Build a Risk Register
• Policies to implement
• Risk audit (what to look for and want to check)

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Assignment 2 Feedback

• I want to see your own work, not extracts from
  web pages.
• You should summarize ideas and thoughts and not
  extract them from the web readings and include
  them in your paper. Especially without
  attribution.
• I want to see your thoughts and ideas and not
  those of another author.
• If you do include other people's work in your
  paper you must show this with quotes and
  citations.
• Note to cheaters if you cut and paste, make sure
  you use a consistent format. Otherwise it becomes
  very obvious what you are doing!
• References must include author, title, etc.
  Include a date (of publication or retrieval).
• If the citation is a web page it must include
  visible URLs (not a hidden hyperlink). Difficult
  if the document is printed to see the citation.
• Citations of Google and Wikipedia must specify
  full URL.

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SE 477 Class 7
Topic Controlling risk

• Project Risk ManagementQualitative Risk Analysis
• Analyzing project risk
• Inputs to qualitative risk analysis
• Tool and techniques
• Risk probability and impact assessment
• Probability and impact matrix
• Output from qualitative risk analysis
• Updating the risk register

• Project Risk ManagementRisk Response Planning,
  risk avoidance, mitigation, and contingency
  planning
• Changing the risk profile
• Strategies for negative risks
• Strategies for positive risks
• Planning for contingency
• Contingency planning
• Risk response planning outputs
• Project Risk ManagementRisk Monitoring

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Thought for the day
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Last time

• Project Risk Management I
• Risk the Risk Management Model
• Risk Management Planning
• Input, tools, and output of risk management
  planning
• Risk management plan
• Risk categories
• Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS)
• Risk probability and impact
• Risk Identification, quantification and
  prioritization
• Where to find risks
• Risk identification tools and techniques
• Assumptions analysis
• Diagramming techniques
• Risk identification output the risk register

7
Today

• Reading
• Software Risk Management Not Just for the Big
  Manufacturers? (January 1997). MDDI (Discusses
  SERIM)
• PMP Study Guide Chapter 5
• Kerzner Chapter 17
• Taylor Chapter 7
• Taylor (Survival Guide) Chapter 13

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Risk Management Paradigm
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How risk averse are you?

• Risk averse people
• I like being dependable and Im usually punctual.
• I am not likely to take chances.
• I am responsible and prefer to work efficiently.
• I am more service oriented than self oriented.
• I value institutions and observe traditions.

• Risk seeking people
• I like action, and I act impulsively at times.
• I seek excitement for the thrill of the
  experience.
• I am resourceful and prefer not to plan or
  prepare.
• I am more self oriented than service oriented.
• I like to anticipate another persons position.

• Risk neutral people
• I trust my intuition, and I am comfortable with
  unknown.
• I think about the future and have long-range
  objectives.
• I am naturally curious and often ask, Why?
• I enjoy generating new ideas.
• I work best when I am inspired.

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Elements of Risk Analysis
What are the risks involved in getting to work?
Reduce the occurrence and/or impact of the risk.
Identify new risks as they occur report on all
known risks.
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Risk Management

• Risk assessment
• Objectives
• Analyze risk in a cost-efficient manner
• Determine source of risk
• Determine risk exposure
• Determine time frame for action
• Determine highest-severity risks

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Assessing Project Risk-I

• Have top software and customer managers formally
  committed to support the project?
• Are end-users enthusiastically committed to the
  project and the system/product to be built?
• Are requirements fully understood by the software
  engineering team and their customers?
• Have customers been involved fully in the
  definition of requirements?
• Do end-users have realistic expectations?

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Assessing Project Risk-II

• Is project scope stable?
• Does the software engineering team have the right
  mix of skills?
• Are project requirements stable?
• Does the project team have experience with the
  technology to be implemented?
• Is the number of people on the project team
  adequate to do the job?
• Do all customer/user constituencies agree on the
  importance of the project and on the requirements
  for the system/product to be built?

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Risk Management

• Reactive Risk Management
• project team reacts to risks when they occur
• mitigationplan for additional resources in
  anticipation of fire fighting
• fix on failureresource are found and applied
  when the risk strikes
• crisis managementfailure does not respond to
  applied resources and project is in jeopardy

• Proactive Risk Management
• formal risk analysis is performed
• organization corrects the root causes of risk
• TQM concepts and statistical SQA
• examining risk sources that lie beyond the bounds
  of the software
• developing the skill to manage change

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Proactive Risk Strategies

• Begins long before technical work is initiated.
• Potential risks are identified.
• Probability and impact of risks are assessed.
• Risks prioritized by importance.
• Software team establishes a plan to manage the
  risk.

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Project Risk Management II

• Qualitative Risk Analysis
• Risk Response Planning
• Risk Monitoring

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Qualitative Risk Analysis
18
Introduction

• Qualitative risk analysis is concerned with
  prioritizing identified risks
• Priority is determined by estimating a risks
  probability of occurrence and its impact on the
  project
• Helps determine if it is necessary to perform
  quantitative risk analysis, a more complex
  analysis process
• Used throughout project its fast, relatively
  easy, and cost-effective

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Inputs to qualitative risk analysis

• Organizational process assets
• Historical information from previous projects
• Includes formal or informal lessons learned as
  well as closure documentation and/or post mortems
• Project scope statement
• Identifies initially-defined risks
• Risk management plan
• Provides framework within which to perform risk
  analysis
• Risk register
• Provides a comprehensive enumeration and
  description of all project risks

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Tools and Techniques
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Risk Projection

• Risk projection, also called risk estimation,
  attempts to rate each risk in two ways
• the likelihood and probability.
• the consequences of the problems associated with
  the risk, should it occur.
• The project manager performs the following risk
  projection activities
• Establish a scale that reflects the perceived
  likelihood of the risk.
• Delineate the consequences of the risk.
• Estimate the impact of the risk on the project.
• Note the overall accuracy of the risk projection.

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Risk Prioritization

• How to prioritize risks?
• One way to prioritize risks is to estimate the
  probability of its occurrence and its
  consequences (loss) when it does occur.
• The expected value of the loss for the risk can
  be used for prioritization. This expected value
  is called risk exposure. If Pr is the probability
  of a risk R occurring and Lr is the total loss
  incurred if the risk materializes, then risk
  exposure RE, for the risk is given by the
  following equation
• REr Pr X Lr

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Risk Analysis

• Determine impact of each risk
• Risk Exposure (RE)
• a.k.a. Risk Impact
• RE Probability of loss size of loss
• Ex risk is Facilities not ready on time
• Probability is 25, size is 4 weeks, RE is 1 week
• Ex risk is Inadequate design redesign
  required
• Probability is 15, size is 10 weeks, RE is 1.5
  weeks
• Statistically are expected values
• Sum all REs to get expected overrun
• Which is pre risk management

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Risk Analysis

• Estimating size of loss
• Loss is easier to see than probability
• You can break this down into chunks (like WBS)
• Estimating probability of loss
• Use team member estimates and have a
  risk-estimate review
• Use Delphi or group-consensus techniques
• Use gambling analogy how much would you bet
• Use adjective calibration highly likely,
  probably, improbable, unlikely, highly unlikely

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Risk Prioritization

• Remember the 80-20 rule
• Often want larger-loss risks higher
• Or higher probability items
• Possibly group related risks
• Helps identify which risks to ignore
• Those at the bottom

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Risk probability and impact assessment

• First, assess the probability that the identified
  risk will occur
• Second, determine the impacts of the risk on
  project objectives time, scope, quality, and
  cost
• Assessment helps determine which risks require
  aggressive management
• Probabilities and impacts are defined in the risk
  management plan under the heading definitions of
  risk probability and impact

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Probability

• Probability is the likelihood that an event will
  occur
• Fair coin flip 0.5 probability of getting heads,
  0.5 probability of getting tails
• Sum of probabilities of all outcomes adds up to
  1.0
• For any event e, the probability p that e will
  occur is 0.0 pe 1.0
• The complementary probability that e will not
  occur is just 1.0 - pe
• Risk probability is the probability that the risk
  event will occur sometime during the life of the
  project and is most often determined through
  expert judgment
• Expert judgment is, in reality, just an educated
  guess, due to uniqueness of each project
• Ways to improve the utility of risk probabilities
• Develop consistent decision criteria for
  determining probabilities
• Involve as many experts as you can

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Quantifying risk probability

• Most probability estimates come from experts as
  subjective ratings low, medium, high, etc.
• Present estimator with cardinal (numeric) scale
  so that a more precise estimate can be obtained
• Need a quantified risk value for use in the
  probability and impact matrix

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Impact

• Impact is the amount of pain or gain the risk
  event poses to the various project objectives
  cost, time, scope, and quality
• Like probability, risk impact may be
  characterized on a subjective scale (low, medium,
  high)
• Like probability, a cardinal (numeric) scale of
  impact is needed for the probability and impact
  matrix
• Employ consistent decision criteria when using a
  subjective scale
• Establish a consistent means of determining what
  moves a borderline impact into one impact
  category or another
• Following slide shows the (negative) impact scale
  from the PMBOK Guide, Third Edition

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Quantifying impact
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1
2
1
2
1
2
1
2
Potential consequence of 1. of undetected
software errors or faults, 2. if desired outcome
is not achieved.
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Assessing probability and impact

• Probability and impact values are defined in
  order to readily place a value on a risk event
• Use predefined probability and impact values as a
  starting point for a project and customize them
  as needed for the organization
• Use brainstorming or the Delphi technique to
  establish or refine the probability and impact
  values
• During Qualitative Risk Analysis process,
  determine and assess probability and impact for
  every risk identified during the Risk
  Identification process
• Document probability and impact and any
  assumptions used to arrive at these values

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Probability and impact matrix

• Risk probability and impact values are nice, but
  what we need is a single value to characterize
  the combined effects of these two risk
  influences the risk rating
• This is what a probability and impact matrix
  does it assigns an overall risk rating to each
  risk
• The combination of probability and impact results
  in an ordinal (order-based) risk rating usually
  expressed as low, medium, or high
• The PMBOK Guide also assigns a color code to each
  rating low risks are green, medium risks are
  yellow, and high risks are red
• A risk with high probability and high impact (and
  hence, high risk rating) warrants further
  analysis and a formal response plan in the Risk
  Response Planning process

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Probability and impact matrix from PMBOK Guide,
Third Edition
35
Example MMS integration problems

• The project management team has identified a
  potential problem with integrating the Membership
  Management System with the smart card reader
  software
• Heres what the team has discovered
• Five different experts agreed that the overall
  impact of the integration problem could result in
  a 5-10 delay in the project schedule
• From the table in slide 21, we see a 5-10 time
  impact corresponds to a Moderate impact with a
  value of 0.20
• The experts came to a consensus that there is a
  somewhat better than even chance that the problem
  will occur. The probability values the team got
  were 0.6, 0.5, 0.5, 0.75, 0.5
• If we take our 0.20 impact value and use it as
  the entry point into the probability and impact
  matrix on slide 24, we find that the risk rating
  for this event ranges from 0.10 to a bit more
  than 0.14, within the medium (yellow) range

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Other qualitative risk analysis tools

• Risk data quality assessment
• Low-quality data renders qualitative risk
  analysis almost useless
• Quality assessment examines
• Quality of data used
• Availability of data for identified risks
• How well the risk is understood
• Reliability and integrity of data
• Accuracy of data
• Risk categorizations
• Entries in the RBS can help identify the project
  phase and determine the elements of the project
  that are affected by risk

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Other qualitative risk analysis tools

• Risk urgency assessment
• Do not try to deal with all risks at the same
  time
• Analogous to rolling wave planning determine how
  soon potential risks might occur
• Develop risk response plan for those risks that
  might occur soon
• For greater efficiency and effectiveness, only
  the top ten risks should be actively managed
• Maintain a watch list of the remaining risks to
  replace those on the top 10 list that are
  mitigated, controlled, eliminated, or that don't
  materialize

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Outputs
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Updates to the risk register

• Update risk register with the following
  information
• Risk ranking of identified risks. Order the
  identified risks by risk rating
• Risks grouped by categories. Identify low,
  medium, and high risk groups to allow easier
  risk urgency assessment and planning
• List of risks requiring near-term responses
• List of risks for additional analysis and
  response
• Watch list of low-priority risks. Low-priority
  risks can still impact a projectmonitor them
• Qualitative Risk Analysis trends. Look for
  patterns that might help in response planning

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Risk Response Planning
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Introduction

• Risk response planning is concerned with
  developing options and possible reactions to
  mitigate threats and exploit opportunities
  discovered during the risk analysis processes
• The severity of the risk dictates the level of
  risk response planning that should be performed
• A risk with low severity is not worth the time it
  takes to develop a detailed risk response plan
• Risk responses should be cost effective
• If the response cost is more than the cost of the
  risk, formulate a less-costly risk response

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Introduction

• Risk responses must be timely
• An untimely risk response itself becomes a risk
• Risk responses must be agreed to by all the
  project stakeholders
• Risk responses must be assigned to an individual
  (the risk owner) who is responsible for
  monitoring the risk and executing the risk
  response plan if needed

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Tools and Techniques
44
Strategies for negative risks or threats

• Avoidance
• Risk avoidance evades a risk, eliminates the
  cause of the risk event, or changes the project
  plan to protect the project objectives from the
  risk event
• Risk avoidance eradicates the risk by removing
  the risk or its cause
• Risk avoidance is most suitable in the early
  stages of a project, through improved
  communications, additional resources, or
  more-clearly defined scope
• Example Risk of interfacing MMS to external art
  museum membership systems can be avoided by
  eliminating requirement to do so

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Strategies for negative risks or threats

• Risk transfer
• Risk transfer moves the risk and the consequences
  of that risk to a third party
• Responsibility for the management of that risk
  now rests with another party
• Risk transfer comes in many forms but is most
  effective for financial risks
• Example Insurance is one form of risk transfer

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Strategies for negative risks or threats

• Contracting
• Contracting is another form of risk transfer
• The contractor accepts certain aspects of the
  risk and responsibility for the cost of failure
• Types of contracts
• Fixed-price contract. Contractor increases cost
  of the contract to compensate for the level of
  risk they are accepting
• Cost reimbursable contract. Contractor receives
  compensation for additional costs. Majority of
  the risk remains with the buyer

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Risk Mitigation, Monitoring, and Management

• Mitigationhow can we avoid the risk?
• Monitoringwhat factors can we track that will
  enable us to determine if the risk is becoming
  more or less likely?
• Managementwhat contingency plans do we have if
  the risk becomes a reality?

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Strategies for negative risks or threats

• Mitigation
• Risk mitigation attempts to reduce the
  probability of a risk event and/or its impacts to
  an acceptable level
• Risk mitigation takes the viewpoint that fixing a
  problem earlier in a project is less costly than
  fixing it later
• Examples Performing more tests, using simpler
  processes, perform simulations, choose vendors
  for reliability over cost

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Strategies for positive risks or opportunities

• Exploitation
• Exploitation involves looking for opportunities
  for positive impacts
• Example Reduce project duration by using more
  experienced resources on critical tasks
• Sharing
• Sharing is the positive analog to transferring
• Sharing assigns risk to a third-party owner who
  is better able to use the opportunity the risk
  presents
• Example Form a joint venture between a technical
  software company and marketing and sales firm

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Contingency planning

• Contingency planning involves planning
  alternatives to deal with the risks should they
  occur
• Contingency planning
• Does not seek to reduce the probability or impact
  of risks
• Accepts that the risk may occur and plans ways to
  respond to the risk
• A contingency plan is executed when the risk
  event occurs
• Contingency plans must be in place well before
  the time the risk may occur

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Contingency planning tools

• Contingency allowances (or reserves). Contingency
  allowances provide a pool of funds, time, or
  resources that are held for use in response to an
  unavoidable risk event
• Example Including contingency time in case of
  loss of key personnel
• Fallback plans. Fallback (or Plan B) plans are
  developed for risks with high impact or for risks
  with strategies that may in themselves be risky
• Fallback plans may be used to address secondary
  risks
• Example Use of a relational database plus
  object-oriented interface in place of pure O-O
  database

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Sidebar Residual and secondary risks

• Secondary risks arise as a result of implementing
  a risk responsethey are the risks inherent in
  the response
• Identify and plan responses for secondary risks
  using tools such as fallback plans
• Example O-O/RDB expert consultant becomes ill
• Residual risks are those that cannot be
  effectively dealt with within the rest of the
  risk plan
• Example Some risk may remain as a result of
  other response plans. Residual risks are usually
  dealt with through contingency reserves
• Example Developer skills risks (resource
  planning risk) associated with alternate database
  solution

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Outputs
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Risk response planning outputs

• Risk register updates
• List of identified risks, including
• Descriptions
• WBS element or area of the project impacted
• Categories (RBS)
• Root causes
• Project objectives impacted by the risk impacts
• Risk owners and their responsibilities
• Risk triggersprecursors to risk event
• Response plans and strategies

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Risk response planning outputs

• Cost and schedule activities needed to implement
  risk responses
• Contingency plans
• Contingency reserves for cost, time, and
  resources
• Fallback plans
• List of residual and secondary risks
• Probabilistic analysis of the project and other
  outputs of the qualitative (and quantitative)
  risk analysis processes

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RMMM Plan Template

• Introduction
• Scope and purpose of document
• Overview of major risks
• Responsibilities
• Management
• Technical staff
• Project Risk Table
• Description of all risks above cut-off
• Factors influencing probability and impact

• Risk mitigation, monitoring, management
• Risk n
• Mitigation
• General strategy
• Specific steps to mitigate the risk
• Monitoring
• Factors to be monitored
• Monitoring approach
• Management
• Contingency Plan
• Special Considerations
• RMMM Plan Iteration schedule
• Summary.

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Risk Monitoring
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Basic principles

• Risks must be managed. Risk must always be one of
  the principle concerns of the project management
  team
• Risks must be reported
• Risks should be an agenda item in weekly team
  meetings
• Risks should be included in the project status
  report
• Weekly project review should review all risks
• Team meeting
• Should briefly review all outstanding risks
• Should estimate whether each risks probability
  has increased, has decreased, or is unchanged
• Risk owners should report on their assigned risks

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Basic principles

• In the project status report, list all risks for
  which the degree of risk has changed
• Weekly project review
• Review all risks, even those that have been
  eliminated
• Goal is to uncover new risks or identify those
  that have been reincarnated
• Reviewing risks in weekly team meetings keeps the
  team and risk owners aware and sensitized to
  risks
• Including risks in the project status report
  prepares management for the time(s) when risks
  happen

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Seven Principles

• Maintain a global perspectiveview software risks
  within the context of system and the business
  problem
• Take a forward-looking viewthink about the risks
  that may arise in the future establish
  contingency plans
• Encourage open communicationif someone states a
  potential risk, dont discount it.
• Integratea consideration of risk must be
  integrated into the software process
• Emphasize a continuous processthe team must be
  vigilant throughout the software process,
  modifying identified risks as more information is
  known and adding new ones as better insight is
  achieved.
• Develop a shared product visionif all
  stakeholders share the same vision of the
  software, it likely that better risk
  identification and assessment will occur.
• Encourage teamworkthe talents, skills and
  knowledge of all stakeholders should be pooled

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Software Engineering Risk Model (SERIM)
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Software Engineering Risk Model (SERIM)

• Applicable for small and medium sized
  organizations.
• Primarily qualitative with quantitative analysis.
• Applicable to full life-cycle including
  maintenance phase.
• Maintainable during project development.
• Compatible with any development model, such as
  spiral, waterfall, joint application design,
  recent application design, incremental, or
  prototyping.
• SERIM uses risk questions to derive numerical
  probabilities for a set of risk factors and
  analyses them using a simple spreadsheet.

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SERIM Terminology

• Risk Elements Technical, Cost, Scheduling
  problems.
• Risk Factors - more specific subcategories of the
  three general risk elements (for example
  organizational risk). A risk factor can be
  related to one or more risk elements.
• SERIM identifies ten primary risk factors of
  organization, estimation, monitoring,
  development, tools, risk culture, usability,
  correctness, reliability, and personnel.
• Each software risk factor can have an influence
  on each risk element. That influence can be
  categorized as low, medium, or high.

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SERIM Terminology
The impact of each risk factor on each risk
element.
The effect of risk factors on each risk
categories.
65
Risk questions

• One approach to assessing risk is to use risk
  questions to measure risk factors.
• Answers to the questions can be recorded in a
  yes-or-no format (0 or 1) or as a numerical range
  of possible responses.
• Response ranges can use any numerical value from
  0 through 1. For example, a response range could
  be defined as none 0, little 0.2, some 0.5,
  most 0.8, and all 1.0.

The relationship of risk questions to risk
factors and risk elements.
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Organizational questions
O1. Are you using or do you plan to use
experienced software managers? O2. Has your
company been producing software similar to this
in the past? O3. Is there a documented
organizational structure either in place or
planned? O4. Is the organizational structure
stable? O5. What is the confidence level of your
management team? O6. Does good communication
exist between different organizations supporting
the development of the software project? O7. Are
software configuration management functions being
performed? O8. Are software quality functions
being performed?
Scores
Devise a numerical range of responses For
example in question O1 1 Mgrs with little or no
SE experience. 0.5 Mix of experienced and
non-experienced managers. 0 Only experienced
managers.
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Calculating P(An) Example Organizational success
2. Calculate Imp / Impact Total.
3. Calculate of Impact X success.
1. Sum the impacts.
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Quantitative Risk Analysis

• The probability of a successful project P(A) is
  derived using the following equation where E
  the number of risk elements.
• This equation assumes that all risk elements are
  equal in weight. P(A) is the probability of a
  successful project.
• If different risk elements have different impacts
  (weights), then P(A) w1P(A1) w2P(A2)
  w3P(A3),
• where w1 is a positive number and w1 w2
  w3 1.

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Example

• 5 risk elements at the following probabilities
  for successA1 0.9, A2 0.75, A3 0.85, A4
  0.6, A5 0.95
• Risk elements weighted as
• w1 0.2, w2 0.4, w3 0.1, w4 0.1, w5 0.2
• Probability for successP(A) (0.90.2)
  (0.750.4) (0.850.1) (0.60.1)
  (0.950.2)
• P(A) 0.815
• Question Should we proceed??????

70
Next Class

• Topic
• Project Processes
• Execution
• Monitoring, control and tracking
• Project velocity Earned Value Analysis
• Project closeout.
• Reading
• PMP Study Guide Chapters 9-11
• Kerzner Chapter 15.5, 19.8
• Hallows Chapter 5
• Lewis Chapter 8, 9
• Taylor Chapter 9, 11
• Taylor (Surviving) Chapter 13-14

71
Journal Exercises

• What is SERIM? What is it good for? How does it
  work?No, it is not an Italian vending machine
  company with a good cup of coffee.