Risk Management Integration

As the Project Manager of Project X, I believe that "risk management is "everybody's business." This memo is to outline how an Engineer and Technologist / Programmer could integrate risk management into their jobs.

Risk management is important to every aspect of the team member of Project X. Looking at the Engineers and Technologists / Programmers on the team, risk management focuses on potential failures in a project. By focusing on identifying the risks of the Project X, the Engineers and Technologists / Programmers can develop processes of proactively identifying risks with the hopes that you will avoid failures. Risk Management should be performed before, during and while the "work is being done". (Mulcahy, 2004). The Engineers and Technologists can be identified as the stakeholders of the project, "who stand to gain or lose from the success or failure of a system" (Nuseibeh & Easterbrook, 2000).

By implementing risk management to the daily functions of the Engineers and Technologist / Programmers, risk management can ""improve their business processes because they are so focused on addressing the compliance issues. But really, compliance is just the minimum quality standard," said John Oliveira, Director of Operations for Horizon Casualty Services." (Minsky, 2005)

Not only must the Engineers and Technologists / Programmers identify the risks, they must do something about it! "SEI's approach to risk management is embodied within its risk management paradigm (Figure below), which depicts the basic functions of managing risks: identify, analyze, plan, track, control, and communicate." (Dorofee, Walker, and Williams, 2005) The following diagram shows us how we can implement risk management into your daily job functions for a continuing process to avoid failures.

At first, it may seem like this is a lot of additional work to your everyday duties, however, by avoiding failures we are going to ensure the success of the project. That means that you will have to put time into risk management. We can use simple methods to identify and track risks such as spreadsheets and simple word tables. By avoiding these potential failures, this will make your job easier. Because risk management avoid failures / problems, the cost savings may be hard to track, however by avoiding problems the company will ensure the success of the project and save the stakeholders money.

References:
Mulcahy, Rita, Projects@Work (August 26, 2004), Risk Management, Tricks of the Trade® for Project Managers is a publication of RMC Publications, Inc... [Electronic Version] Retrieved on May 22, 2006 from http://www.projectsatwork.com/article.cfm?ID=219659

Nuseibeh and Easterbrook. 2000. Requirements Engineering: A Roadmap. ICSE-Future of SE Track.

Minsky, Steven, CEO and Founder of Logic Manager Inc., June 24, 2005, "Developing Risk Plans", [Electronic Version] Retrieved on June 1, 2006 from http://www.ebizq.net/topics/tech_in_biz/features/6021.html?page=2

Audrey J. Dorofee, Julie A. Walker, and Ray C. Williams, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 2005, "Risk Management in Practice", [Electronic Version] retrieved on June 1, 2006 from http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/1997/04/management.asp