Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects

by Tom DeMarco, Tim Lister

Overview

This is the digital version of the printed book (Copyright © 2003).

If There’s No Risk On Your Next Project, Don’t Do It.

 

Greater risk brings greater reward, especially in software development. A company that runs away from risk will soon find itself lagging behind its more adventurous competition. By ignoring the threat of negative outcomes–in the name of positive thinking or a can-do attitude–software managers drive their organizations into the ground.

 

In Waltzing with Bears, Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister–the best-selling authors of Peopleware–show readers how to identify and embrace worthwhile risks. Developers are then set free to push the limits.

 

The authors present the benefits of risk management, including that it makes aggressive risk-taking possible, protects management from getting blindsided, provides minimum-cost downside protection, reveals invisible transfers of responsibility, isolates the failure of a subproject.

 

Readers are armed with strategies for confronting the most common risks that software projects face: schedule flaws, requirements inflation, turnover, specification breakdown, and under-performance.

 

Waltzing with Bears will help you mitigate the risks–before they turn into project-killing problems. Risks are out there–and they should be there–but there is a way to manage them.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780133492231
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	07/15/2013
Series:	Dorset House eBooks
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Tom Demarco and Timothy Lister are principals of The Atlantic Systems Guild ( www.systemsguild.com), a consulting firm specializing in the complex processes of system building, with particular emphasis on the human dimension. Together, they have lectured, written, and consulted internationally since 1979 on management, estimating, productivity, and corporate culture.

 

Tom is the author or coauthor of nine books on subjects ranging from development methods to organizational function and dysfunction, as well as two novels and a book of short stories. His consulting practice focuses primarily on expert witness work, balanced against the occasional project and team consulting assignment. For the past three years, he has been teaching undergraduate ethics at the University of Maine. He lives with his wife, Sally O. Smyth, in Camden, Maine.

 

Tim divides his time among consulting, teaching, and writing. Based in Manhattan, Tim is coauthor, with Tom DeMarco, of Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior (Dorset House, 2008), written with four other principals of The Atlantic Systems Guild, and Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams,Third Edition (Addison-Wesley, 2013). He is a member of the IEEE, the ACM, and the Cutter IT Trends Council, and is a Cutter Fellow.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Ethics of Belief         3

 

PART I: WHY         7

 

Chapter 1: Running Toward Risk         9

 

Chapter 2: Risk Management Is Project Management for Adults        15

 

Chapter 3: Denver International Airport Reconsidered         22

 

Chapter 4: The Case for Risk Management         29

 

PART II: WHY NOT         35

 

Chapter 5: The Case Against Risk Management         37

 

Chapter 6: The Onus of Uncertainty        42

 

Chapter 7: Luck          46

 

PART III: HOW         51

 

Chapter 8: Quantifying Uncertainty         53

 

Chapter 9: Mechanics of Risk Management        60

 

Chapter 10: Risk Management Prescription         73

 

Chapter 11:. Back to Basics         80

 

Chapter 12: Tools and Procedures        91

 

Chapter 13: Core Risks of Software Projects         101

 

Chapter 14: A Defined Processfor Risk Discovery         113

 

Chapter 15: Risk Management Dynamics        121

 

Chapter 16: Incrementalism for Risk Mitigation        128

 

Chapter 17: The Ultimate Risk Mitigation Strategy       138

 

PART IV: HOW MUCH        143

 

Chapter 18: Value Quantification        147

 

Chapter 19: Value Is Uncertain, Too          151

 

Chapter 20: Sensitivity Analysis           156

 

Chapter 21: Value Offsets Risk         160

 

Chapter 22: Refining the Risk Management Prescription           164

 

PART V: WHETHER OR NOT         169

 

Chapter 23: Test for Risk Management         171

 

Appendix A: The Ethics of Belief, Part 1         175

 

Appendix B: Risk Template         181

 

References          183

 

Index         191