Analyzing and Designing Risk Metrics for Software Projects

Abstract

In today’s e-world, software applications are the driving force of modern business operations. But software development is viewed as one of the major problem areas of almost every corporation in the modern world as software development projects still fail to be delivered on time, within budget and with desired quality. This is mainly due to lack of planning in developing the software and the unforeseen factors that come into picture at a later stage of planning. One area of concentration in Software Project Management that has focused on these problems is Risk Management. Risk Management attempts to assess and then control the risks that make the software management a tedious and challenging job. In the era of downsizing, consolidation, shrinking budgets, increasing technological sophistication and shorter development times, Risk Management can provide valuable insights to key project professionals in ensuring project success. Proper planning, analysis and monitoring of potential risk helps in addressing the issues long before the issues surface as problems and adversely affect project cost, performance and schedule. With so many project deliverables driving the global organisation, insight into key project information is essential. Being able to identify the factors that can sabotage a seemingly smooth-running project is critical. Every project has risks and the biggest mistake would be to ignore those risks. The management of risks is a central issue in the planning and management of any software venture. This thesis tries to analyze the various ways of measuring risks in software projects and design new metrics for measuring the same in different and more efficient ways so as to minimize the adverse effect of risks on development of software projects. Measuring and controlling the risks before they become a reality i.e. proactive risk management for software projects is the main focus area of the present work.