Risk Management in Agile Development

Risk Management in Agile Development

Introduction

Agile development is a modern approach which promotes frequent inspection and monitoring, encourages team work & self organization, rapid delivery of high quality software and finally alignment of customer needs with company’s goals. This methodology is being used extensively across the globe. Scrum is one of the commonly used Agile Methodology.

Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework for projects and product or application development. It structures development in cycles of work called ‘Sprints’. These iterations are 1-4 weeks in length, and take place one after the other. The Sprints are of fixed duration. They end on a specific date whether the work has been completed or not, and are never extended. The Product Owner is responsible for maximizing return on investment (ROI) by identifying product features, translating these into a prioritized feature list, deciding which should be at the top of the list for the next Sprint, and continually re-prioritizing and refining the list.

The ScrumMaster is not the manager of the team or a project manager; instead, the ScrumMaster serves the team, protects them from outside interference, and educates and guides the Product Owner and the team in the skillful use of Scrum. They support the team by respecting the rules and spirit of Scrum, help remove impediments that the team identifies and make their expertise and experience available to the team.

The Product Backlog includes a variety of items, primarily new customer features, but also engineering improvement goals , exploratory or research work, and, possibly, known defects, if there are only a few problems.

The Spring Backlog is the list of items that the team is committed to deliver by the end of the Sprint.

Any Project adopting agile development methodology is executed in short cycled iterations or sprints. Duration for each of the iteration/sprint are anywhere between 3 to 4 weeks. Risks do exist, even though the iterations are short time spanned. More so, risks are different and may be high in number. They need to be identified and managed similar to that of conventional
projects with slight deviations.

It is essential for the Project Manager/Scrum Master to understand the pitfalls of agile methodology and how can these be managed. In addition to that, he/she needs to have a good understanding of the risk management process to be followed in agile projects. This would be necessary for the successful execution of the project.

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