Critial risks of small team software development

Abstract

Risk management is a systematic process of identifying, analyzing, and responding to project risk. Project risk is defined as an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or a negative effect on a project objective [14]. The reason is that project risk includes both threats to the project``s objectives and opportunities to improve on those objectives. A risk has a cause and, if it occurs, a consequence. When a risk is identified, project organization uses project risk management to minimize or avoid it. This includes establishing a mitigation plan, allocating resources, and so on. This consequence will influence the cost of project, the time taken to complete it, the project``s quality, and other areas. Thus, an organization must understand and control project risks to ensure for project success. Because of an organization``s size, large size teams have many resources, and environmental supports, but small teams do not. Thus, when problems and risks occur in a small team``s project, the effectiveness of handling risks and problems is more critical than in a larger size team. Thus, defining the risks of a small size team is important for managing a small size team``s software development. Many risk-related researches show the general risks facing small or large size teams. But there has been little consideration of a small team``s specific risks. Thus, in this thesis, we will identify the risks which small teams face in software development through analyzing the identified risk data of small size teams with software risk taxonomy. The objective of this thesis is to define the critical risks for software project management in small size teams. In order to do that, we first establish a procedure for finding the critical risks from the risk data. Next, we explain the results of the analysis of risks and compare the risks with IEEE/EIA 12207.0-1996 and Boehm``s Top 10 risks. We suggest that critical risks and procedure are the baseline fo...