Risk and Stakeholder Management

Risk management

Good risk management starts with good risk analysis, and in order to analyze, we first need to understand what we are analyzing well enough to do so. That is to say, to properly analyze risk in the technology sector, we need to understand technology.

The figure below illustrates how the technical toolset allows for more effective risk management:

The figure above concentrates on the first two stages of risk management: risk identification and risk analysis. The last three in the cycle are mainly administrative and act upon the work completed in the first two stages. As we can see, the first two stages both include all three technical skills we’ve covered. Let’s discuss both stages in a little more detail.

Risk identification

Knowing the code base doesn't just help us create a plan—it can also help us identify risks. For instance, we might notice that a particular requirement will require a code refactor in a package that is currently being modified in another project, potentially causing a cross-project dependency and risking delivery timelines.

Knowing our code base and service dependencies can also help us identify risks in system designs. Introducing a new architectural pattern to an existing system or to a system that is new to the team is a risk to timelines because there are a lot of unknown unknowns when doing greenfield development.

Knowing our architectural landscape ...