An Early Phase Software Project Risk Assessment Support Method for Emergent Software Organizations

Abstract

Risk identification and assessment are amongst critical activities in software project management. However, identifying and assessing risks and uncertainties is a challenging process especially for emergent software organizations that lack resources. The research aims to introduce a method and a prototype tool to assist software development practitioners and teams with risk assessment processes. We have identified and put forward software project related risks from the literature. Then by conducting a survey to software practitioners of small organizations, we collected probability and impact of each risk factor opinions of 86 practitioners based on past projects. We developed a risk assessment method and a prototype tool initially based on data that accumulates further data as the tool. Along with a risk prioritisation and risk matrix, the method utilises fuzzy logic to provide the practitioners with predicted scores for potential failure types and aggregated risk score for the project. In order to validate the usability of the method and the tool, we have conducted a case study for the project risk assessment in a small software organization. The introduced method is partially successful at prediction of risks and estimating the probability of predefined failure modes.