1

List Relevant Risk Categories

• Risk categories can include;
• Dependencies across the organization and technical dependencies on components, architecture, and other parts within a program.
• Requirements uncertainty due to lack of good product vision, lack of understanding of the market place, poor strategic planning, lack of maturity of the market segment, no established go-to-market strategy, competitive maneuvers which can affect the original positioning of the product.
• Management issues such as inadequate planning, poor understanding of variation, lack of transparency, lack of slack time to absorb variation, unclear ownership, poor definition of roles and responsibilities, unrealistic commitments, poor estimation, unreasonable expectations, dysfunctional behavior left uncorrected, poor communication, or poor leadership.
• Lack of knowledge in the domain or technical aspects of the product, lack of training in tools and techniques required to build the product, lack of training in the process used on the project, use of new technologies not well understood, or ineffective or poorly understood processes.
• Resource issues such as unavailability of equipment, lack of facilities, lack of personnel or key specialist skills unavailable when required, or lack of backup for critical limited resources.
• Staff turnover and other personnel issues including outage for birth, death in the family, marriage, illness, disability.
• Culture and language issues with multi-location teams, or localization issues with products which are translated and localized for multiple countries/regions and cultures. Localization adds significantly to scope, verification, and validation activities.
• Poor architectural choices or bad technical approaches. This is a secondary effect of a lack of skills and knowledge but it can lead to significant unplanned rework and missed dates.
• Create a list of the risk categories which are right for your project and product vision.

2

Identify Risk Sources

• Risk sources will be monitored for signs of risks materializing. Risk triggers will be set against risk sources. Sources may include:
• Personnel records.
• Requirements, vision statement, business case and strategic planning materials.
• Version control and document servers.
• Plans, estimates, budget, financial records, and analysis work products.
• Architecture and design documents and models.
• Make a list appropriate for your project and product based on the categories of risk already identified.

A document listing the desired categories and the identified sources of risk information.