Page 131 - Navy Journal 219

Software Project ...

Risk Management Planning is the most important activity of risk control. Once
the risk assessment is done and major risk items are identified with relative
priorities, a set of risk control function is to be adopted to mitigate the risk
factors. It is observed that, the top ten checklists identified in figure 5 has also
indicated the management technique under each risk factor. These techniques
may be taken into account and V & V may be done accordingly. The next step is
to develop individual Risk Management Plan for each risk item (Boehm,
Software Risk Management, 1989).Then the individual risk plans for each risk
item is to be integrated with each other and with overall project plan. It might
then turn out that risk plan of an individual risk item might as well as be affective
for other risk item. Thus duplication of effort may be discarded which will result
an optimized overall risk management plan. Again, correlating with BN software
development project it is found that prototyping and requirement scrubbing risk
management plan can have significance outcome on the overall management
plan. Hence, these two techniques might be incorporated with the SDLC.
Integration of software RM is preferred by many government organizations over
the globe to minimize the risk factors of uncertainty and environmental
contingencies.
Embedding RM in the SDLC of BN Software Projects
A number of industries and government organization now require software
projects to identify, assess, and control risk items. Not only this, it has become a
practice over time to the developed world to include RM plans and techniques in
the SDLC plans. DoD-STD-2167A, Air Force Regulation 800-14, and
OpNavInst 5200.28 are few examples of such government policies. However, the
policies dictate that the waterfall SDLC (figure 2) is not suitable for embedding
the RM plans. It is observed that the ‘Spiral Model’ is more suitable for
embedding RM plans. The spiral model (as shown in figure 6) suggests the
iterative process of planning objectives, risk analysis and resolving, prototype
development, and plan the next phase. Spiral model is a risk-driven approach
rather than a document driven or code driven approach to the software process
(Boehm, Software Risk Management: Principles and Practices, 1991). The
model involves review of one prototype in terms of objectives as well as risk
analysis. The risk analysis mentioned in the spiral model includes the risk
identification, risk analysis, and risk prioritization as explained by Barry Boehm.
He also explained that “the next step involves the elaboration and refinement of
the RM Plan for the current cycle, plus a draft of an RM Plan to cover the primary
RM Functions to be performed during the following cycle”.

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