Risk Response Planning

Strategic Project and Risk Management in Dynamic Environments

Risk Management Plan Scope and Identification

The project’s potential risks

The project is in software development and most of the time software development undertakings come with various challenges. The challenges might overlap or might stand out as single issues. It is proper that potential risks are identified early so that mitigation can be initiated. The potential risk areas for software development include integration challenges, software failure, and security challenges. In the following paragraphs, I have indicated several risk areas that might affect the trading software development, the rollout process and the client interaction with the software.

The organization risks developing trading software that will become obsolete in a short time span. This is because of the fast growth of technology. Advancement of technology is accompanied by upgrades and advanced techniques of developing advanced software. The organization also risks developing inferior software compared to market levels. This again is because of advancement of technology. Normally in software development, there are several steps and phases that are merged in order to develop proper working software and at times a phase or step is missed. It might go unnoticed but has the potential to have ripple effects in the future. The organization is at risk of missing a step in development and as a result is also at risk of the software failing.

Due to the direct involvement of money to the software the organization is at risk from hacking. Since there is no restriction on the trading market the organization is at risk of similar software from its competitors. The project is under a constraint budget and the budget constraint might require developers to do away or skip processes that might risk the quality of software. Other than budget constraints the trading software is also under a time constraint. The time constraints might also risk the project quality; the project is at risk of not meeting the client’s expectations.

Failure to meet client’s time expectations exposes the organization; the client might consider other organizations for the development and future developments. There is external overdependence and this brings to light the risk of leaked trade skills and strategy; risk of trade secrets. Every organization is at risk of employee turnover. Turnovers have the potential to affect the project development.

Due to the high stakes involved, the organization's development team is at risk of gold plating in order to win the affection and business of the client. The gold plating is likely to cause a budget exceed. All software developments have many procedures and more often than not the risk of flaunting the procedures or failing to follow the procedure is quite high. There is also the probability of unavoidable risks such as government restrictions on software more so those involved in cash transactions. There is also the risk that the project might not live up to its expectations as far as productivity is concerned.

There are also positive risks that the organization is likely to face. Due to the high stakes involved, precision and effectiveness are encouraged and this exposes the organization to the risks of high-profit gains, production of superior software which might lead to the growth of customer base. Positive risks that the organization is also likely to face include expertise growth due to external overreliance, the risk learning from their failures and they also risk growing the organization.

Techniques used in risk identification

In order to identify the risks I employed the use of several techniques and they included; SWOT analysis, decision trees, assumption analysis and reviewing of related project’s documentation. The SWOT analysis helped in the identification of both internal and external risks as far as the rollout of the software and client uptake was concerned (Seth, 2015). The decision tree helped in identifying future risks since it is effective for analyzing many options or alternatives. The assumption analysis was also useful in determining possible future risks. The reviewing of already developed related project’s documentation was particularly helpful as it provided insight on possible risks factoring all areas i.e. internal risk factors, external risk factors, future potential risks, development risks, clients’ reaction and uptake risks.

Stakeholders of the risk identification process

For any risk identification, various people or groups must be involved depending on the project type and these people or groups can be referred to as risk stakeholders. Risk stakeholders can include people who might be affected or perceive to be affected should a risk come to be. The people involved in the identification of the risks included; the employees of the organization, the developers of the software and the client (In Bérard & In Teyssier, 2017).

The developers were crucial in identifying potential risks considering that they have developed prior software and hence could come up with a list of general risks that affect software. The client also played a role in the identification of risks since they gave information on potential challenges that may affect their activities such as fraud and hacks since they needed software that handled money transactions. Employees of the organization helped in brainstorming more so in the assumption analysis (Virine & Trumper, 2017). This ensured that almost all potential risks were identified.

Qualitative and quantitative risk analysis table

Risk id	Risk description	Risk type/ranking	probability
1	Developers exiting from the organization	threat	0.2
2	Risk of developing an obsolete software	weakness	0.1
3	Risk of developing an inferior software	weakness	0.3
4	Risk of missing a step in development	weakness	0.4
6	Risk of similar software from competitors	threat	0.7
7	Risk of Failure to meet all expectations of client	weakness	0.2
8	Risk of surpassing the budget	weakness	0.7
9	Risk of surpassing the time limit	weakness	0.7
10	Risk of exposure of trade secrets	threat	0.1
11	Risk of gold plating	weakness	0.4
12	Risk of not adhering to procedures	weakness	0.15
13	Risk of producing superior software	opportunity	0.3
14	Risk of organization growing due to large customer growth	opportunity	0.25
15	Risk of fraud and hacking from hackers	threat	0.6
16	Risk of surpassing client’s demands	opportunity	0.3
17	Risk of losing clients to competitors	threat	0.4
18	Risk of interference of the development process by client	threat	0.8
19	Risk of Compromise on quality of final product	weakness	0.1
20	Risk of growing the organization’s profit gain	Opportunity	0.25

References

In Bérard, C., & In Teyssier, C. (2017). Risk management: Lever for SME development and stakeholder value creation.

Población, G. F. J. (2017). Financial Risk Management: Identification, Measurement and Management.

Seth, C. (2015). Swot analysis. Namur: 50minutes.

Virine, L., & Trumper, M. (2017). Project risk analysis made ridiculously simple.