Risk Management

Abstract

Abstract The art of management has been defined as the distribution of current resources to shape a more desirable future state. However, the future is not always as envisioned, because the path to the future is neither immutable nor totally predictable. How well one manages the risks, as well as the opportunities, that materialize along the way will determine whether a more desirable state is achieved. Thus risk management can be described as the continuous analysis of the current situation to realign current resources and management policies against current and future threats, or to maximize the opportunities that are present, thus helping to ensure that the state originally envisioned or one that is better occurs. The following basic questions: The prime motivation for the currently rising interest in risk management and software engineering can be directly traced to two overriding business, as opposed to technology, considerations. The first is the ever increasing complexity and cost of developing software‐intensive systems, coupled with the intensifying negative impact on businesses and individuals when they go awry. The second is that software‐intensive systems have finally achieved the long promised state of becoming the paramount strategic element in an organization's short‐term and long‐term competitive success equation. The risk management field as it applies specifically to software engineering is currently experiencing a period of rapid growth and increased stature, with many governmental and commercial initiatives being pursued to codify the many diverse aspects of the subject into a unified whole. Current research and application efforts undertaken in software engineering related risk management have been concentrated in three overlapping provinces: theory, mechanics, and practice. An overview of each is provided here with the main concentration placed on risk management mechanics. International standards are detailed.