Why do an agile project risk assessment?
Most projects face significant roadblocks to using an agile approach,
creating risks that can jeopardise success unless they are identified early and
specific mitigation strategies put in place.
The Agile Project Risk Assessment identifies the potential roadblocks and
provides mitigation strategies for the risks. It confirms for management how
agile a specific software development project can safely be. It also assists in
determining the development approach that will be used, so that planning,
estimating and resourcing can be effectively undertaken and communicated to all
stakeholders. In extreme cases the project team may decide that some roadblocks
cannot be safely mitigated and a “No Go” decision may be prudent from an agile
perspective.
How does it work?
The Agile Project Risk Assessment is undertaken as an interactive workshop,
with an experienced Equinox Agile coach facilitating discussion with the key
team members from the project. The workshop discussion uses a multi choice
questionnaire to engage the participants and draw out the issues and roadblocks
they see in terms of:
- people skills and attitudes
- project scope
- leadership support
- governance constraints.
The questionnaire has been developed by Equinox based on agile project
experience applying the values and principles from the Agile Manifesto (www.agilemanifesto.org)
and using the supporting agile practices recommended by the commercial agile
methodologies Scrum and XP.
The results of the Agile Project Risk Assessment workshop are formally
reported back as a set of recommended agile practices that the project team can
safely use, and proposed mitigations for the identified areas of agile risk.