Abstract: When exploring new ideas we often encounter new risks. This session looks at how Agile risk management needs to be lightweight, but responsive to known risks as well as previously unknown sources of risk. Building new things means encountering new things that go wrong. This session gives techniques that help identify risks early through faciltated estimation, survey crowdsourcing and historical data analysis. We then discuss how to prioritize risks based on a system impact approach and probabilistic simulation.
We do risky things all the time. Avoiding risk isn't a desirable outcome, there is value in risky ventures. We simply need to know what risks are WORTH taking. We need to take more "wise" risks than our competitors, and this session aims to define what "wise" means and how to identify them in your software development portfolio and projects.
Although risk management is thought of as boring and laborious, it need NOT BE! Agile risk management even when performed in a lightweigth fashion is key to avoiding un-intended losses - in time; in costs; in missed opportunities. If teams and organizations had a better grip on assessing their risk exposure, better decisions and fewer smashed expectation would follow.
This talk covers -
- Where did risk management go in Agile?
- Why traditional risk management doesn't work in Agile
- Because single point likelihood and impact estimates - we need a range based approach
- Because risks and delays compound and small delays propogate into large delays - we need a systems approach
- How to find the risks that matter most
- By asking the teams better risk identification questions and by using survey crowdsourcing
- By looking at history and measuring occurrence and impact, and forecasting future impact
- By using probabilistic techniques to weigh total project impact rather than isolated impact of any one risk
- How to quantify risk impacts and make informed risk decisions
- By financially quantifying things that go wrong - dollars talk
- By using real option and decision tree techniques to move risk decision making down to the team level
Learning Outcomes: - Understand Agile risk management goals and wher current techniques often fail
- The problem with single point estimates of risk occurrence likelihood and impact for prioritization
- Training and calibrating teams on estimation, and how poor human instinct is on risk estimation without help
- How to elicit range estimates from teams and how to extrapolate the high end (tail risk - low probability but high impact)
- Learn the basics about modeling, computing and communicating risk probability and impact
- Learn how to put a dollar value on total risk impact through probabilistic techniques
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