Software Project Management - Report Example

Download file to see previous pages The paper "Software Project Management" is a great example of a report on management. Project risk management is considered critical to the success of projects, particularly software development projects. Therefore, it is important for the project managers to ensure that risks associated with their projects are carefully monitored and controlled on a sustainable basis. Risk Management Software is an ideal tool that can be used to identify, track as well as resolve risks at early stages of software development to boost chances of project success. Traditionally, risk management has been considered an integral part of software development. However, the shift from using traditional models, for instance, the waterfall model to modern or agile methods has resulted in new challenges within the field of software risk management (Sommerville, 2006).

Risk management within the software engineering sector is related to future harms that could affect the success of a software project due to non-noticeable mistakes in the development process. Software projects are highly prone to failures, and thus effective software development involves dealing adequately with risks. The main objective of software risk management is to identify, address, and eliminate the risk items prior to their turning into threats to successful software development. It is crucial that certain forms of measurements have to be taken into consideration so as to determine and classify the various risks that a software development project often faces. Thus, the existence of significant risk exposure must be identified (Sommerville, 2006).

A number of risks are involved in developing high-quality software within the stipulated time period and budget. This clearly indicates that for the user taking of such risks, a perceived reward has to be compensated for the risks. Since the possibility of reward in software development is high and the potential for disaster is also high. Therefore, it becomes relevant to mention that successful management of software projects and reaping of the associated rewards requires careful identification, analysis, and control of risks (Rosenau, 1998).

• Perceptions of software risks and risk management

Although there are various risks that affect software development projects, the main objective of identifying and managing those risks is to understand the perceptions of software risk management. The most important and common concepts used in software risk management include risk index, analysis, and assessment of risks. The perceptions of software project organizations indicate that a part of the inherent challenges caused by the nature of the software projects, lack of project stability is also a major risk software development projects. Boehm (1997) presented 10 major risk items that must be addressed by all software development projects. These include, developing wrong functional properties and user interface, continued changing of software requirements, unrealistic schedules and budgets, shortfalls associated with the externally accomplished tasks, and furnished components as well as strained use of computer-science knowledge (Boehm, 1997).

Similarly, Jones (1998) identified three important software risk factors that raise the concern of executives and software managers. Such risks include inaccurate estimations and poorly scheduled plans, risks related to external pressures that damage the software projects, and incorrect status reporting. It is important to note that majority of the software developers or project managers consider the risk management processes and the associated activities as additional costs and work (Jones, 1998).

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