Risk Management Solutions
According to
Capers Jones in a 2004 study of projects of 10,000
function points or greater, i.e.,
greater than about 1,000 programs or roughly 1 million lines of C or COBOL code,
"Of the 250 projects analyzed, about 25 were deemed successful in
that they achieved their schedule, cost, and quality objectives.
About 50 had delays or overruns below 35 percent, while about 175
experienced major delays and overruns, or were terminated without
completion. The projects included systems software, information
systems, outsourced projects, and defense applications. This
distribution of results shows that large system development is a
very hazardous undertaking. Indeed, some of the failing projects
were examined by the author while working as an expert witness in
breach of contract litigation involving the failed projects."
It is notable that projects using agile project management
methodologies were not included in the study, "... because such methods
are seldom if ever utilized on applications larger than about 1,000
function points."
Risk Management Capabilities
- Assessment
- Risk mitigation strategies
- Risk mitigation tactics
- Risk mitigation implementation and oversight
- Services procurement and vendor management
We help you understand the choices in front of you in plain
business terms, but we are ready to dive as deep into technical
issues as any client or vendor staff member cares to go.
Our risk management services address the full range of technical
risk, project management risk, procurement risk, and vendor
management risk.
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Assessment:
our
risk management strategy starts with a clear-headed assessment of
risks, costs and benefits, from which we lay out the alternatives to our
clients. We avoid the "rose-color glasses" assessment of many
technicians, and take a hard look at what is being proposed by
services vendors, aided by our years of experience working for
several vendors. |
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Risk Mitigation Strategies:
there
are frequently several ways in which a legacy code library and
existing data models can
be leveraged to reduce cost, delivery time and risk
simultaneously, yet still deliver exactly the end result
desired.
In all cases, a risk based approach to the project architecture
with assessment and mitigation strategies can be a very
inexpensive insurance policy against downside risks, and will
usually save many times its cost over the duration of the project.
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Mitigation Tactics: we have multiple tactical approaches, of which some or all
may be applicable to your project:
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Risk based
project architectures
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A range
of project design strategies from low to high risk
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The more
risk averse the client, the more conservative the
project architecture we recommend
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Regression
testing, both automated and manual, provides an important key to
controlling costs and maintaining schedules
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Test coverage
analysis measures the thoroughness of testing
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Agile project
management principle of "deliver early and often" can be
extended to large projects
Evolving the current application into the desired final state
in a controlled, step by step fashion breaks a large project
into several smaller, more easily controlled projects. This
is also the secret behind agile programming and agile project
management methodologies.
Though
counter-intuitive, the actual experience is that this approach
takes less time and costs less, mostly because it enables quick
and inexpensive regression testing. Expensive errors
are caught early when they are cheap to fix instead of late in
the project when they are expensive to fix and
can significantly impact schedules.
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Risk Mitigation Implementation and Oversight: the best
risk management and mitigation plan in the world is only as good
as its implementation. IT people are, in general, not
trained in risk management. If anything, IT people are
inveterate optimists, as they probably have to be to deal with
anything as frustrating as a computer for their working life.
We provide both implementation guidance and, in particular,
regular oversight of the actual implementation and project
progress. We look for problems before they develop
into disasters and cost overruns, based on our experience in
both well run and poorly run legacy modernization projects.
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Services Procurement and Vendor Management: When
you are buying a specialized service from small, specialized
vendors, you may benefit from the experience of someone who has
done this many times before - and from both sides of the table.
We know what is really important but doesn't seem so, and,
conversely, what seems important but isn't. Once the vendor
has been thoroughly evaluated, you are well advised to audit his
work thoroughly in the early stages to compare the actual
efforts to the representations made before contract signing.
Then, if things are proceeding well, gradually withdraw the
oversight to a minimal level, but still include sufficient
review to to ensure the project is not going off the rails each
time a payment
due. |
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