What does it say traditional approaches about risk management? And what about agile? Why scrum by design is able to manager risk in a great way? How risks can be managed in agile big programs?

1. ON RISKS AND AGILE APPROACHES
UNIMORE - November 9th 2019
Università degli Studi
di Modena e Reggio Emilia
Emiliano Soldi
@AgileTriathlete
#IAD19

2. RISK MANAGEMENT
BACK TO BASICS

3. Project Risk is an uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a
positive positive or negative effect on one or more project objectives
and dimensions such as scope, schedule, cost, or quality.
5th Edition Edition of the PMBOK® Guide
PROJECT RISK

4. Known Knowns: things that we know that we know.
Risks we can assess in terms of impact and probability and manage
them accordingly.
Known Unknowns: things that we know that we don’t know.
Risks that have not been accurately measured, but we are aware
they exist.
Unknown Unknowns: things that we don't know that we don't know.
We don’t have any clue about these kind of risks.
These are the most risky and can hit seriously and unexpectedly.
KNOWNS & UNKNOWNS

5. Any risk not identified or managed,
is automatically accepted…
…are you sure you can afford it?

6. 5th Edition Edition of the PMBOK® Guide
RISK MANAGEMENT
Risk Management is the identification, assessment, and prioritization of
risks followed by coordinated and economical application of resources to
minimize, monitor, and control the probability and/or impact of
unfortunate events or to maximize the realization of opportunities.
5th Edition Edition of the PMBOK® Guide

7. Identify
Risks
Qualitative
Analysis
Quantitative
Analysis
Plan
Response
Monitor
and Control
RISK MANAGEMENT LIFECYCLE
Determines which risks affect
the project and document
their characteristics
Prioritizes risks for
further analysis or action
by assessing and
combining their probability
and impact of occurrence
Numerically analyzes
the effect of identified
risks on the overall
project
Track identified risks,
monitor residual ones,
identify new risks, evaluate
risk process effectiveness
RISKS &
OPPORTUNITIES
Develops options and actions to
enhance opportunities and reduce
threats to project objectives

8. Accept Avoid
Transfer
Escalate
Mitigate
Enhance
Eliminate the threat or protect
the project from its impact
Shift the impact of a threat to a third party,
together with ownership of the response
Reduce the probability of
occurrence or impact of a risk
Acknowledge the risk
and not take any action
unless the risk occurs
Increase the probability
and/or the positive
impacts of an
opportunity
RISK RESPONSE STRATEGIES

9. 5th Edition Edition of the PMBOK® Guide
Project Risk Management Knowledge Area

10. …THAT IS TOO MUCH
PROCESS, TOOLS AND DOCUMENTATION!
GREAT!?
BUT…

11. INDIVIDUALS AND INTERACTIONS OVER PROCESS AND TOOLS
WORKING SOFTWARE OVER COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENTATION
Thanks God we have Agile

12. Complexity and its implications, naturally pushes you from
"known unknowns" to "unknown unknowns"…

13. …and actually Agile is about exploring that complexity
by learning and increasing awareness along the journey

14. The nature of complex problems is
such that very small variations in
any aspect of the problem can cause
extremely large and unpredictable
variations in how the problem
manifests itself.
Mike Cohn
Source: Boehm B. (1981), NASA (1990)
CONE OF UNCERTAINTY
Critical Risk Area
How can Agile help us in
reducing the uncertainty?

15. ONCE I READ SOMEWHERE THAT SCRUM IS NOT
THE BEST PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK...

16. … BUT THE GREATEST
RISK MANAGEMENT APPROACH EVER...
WHAAAAAT?!

17. Actually, Scrum (BY DESIGN) gives
us a big set of “tools”
which proactively
help teams to manage risks

18. Empiricism allows problems and risks to surface
Input Work Cycle Output
Sprint Review
Sprint Retro
Feedback >>
Daily Scrum
Iteration
Product Inspection
Process Inspection
Progress Inspection

19. Diverse teams are able to
analyze problems and risks
from different perspectives,
being better problem solver
TEAM CROSS-FUNCTIONALITY AND DIVERSITY

20. In SW Engineering batches of
work are the requirements,
designs, code, tests, and
other work items that “move”
through the system.
Reducing this dimension
allows batches go through the
system more quickly and with
less variability (aka less risks).
Scrum helps teams
to systematically reduce
size of batches of work
BIG BATCHES OF WORK ARE BADIterations Timebox
Decomposition

21. ?
SURFING RISKS
…letting you to surf uncertainty and risks,
thanks to factual inspection of working output

22. …OR WE NEED ADDITIONAL TOOLS TO HELP TEAMS
INCREASE THEIR AWARENESS AND SENSITIVITY?
UNDERSTOOD. WE LOVE THIS "BY DESIGN" AUTOMATISM!
BUT, IS IT ENOUGH TO INTERCEPT UNKNOWN UNKNOWS…

23. Risk is a key factor in Backlog Prioritization
Duration
Business/User
Value
Time
Criticality
Risk Reduction or
Opportunity
Enablement
+ +
=
How can we correctly evaluate inherent risk of features?
 The higher the Numerator
 The lower the Denominator
 The highest the Priority
Cost of Delay

24. INFORMATION RADIATORS DELIVER IMMEDIATE DATA
CREATING UNCONSCIOUS PRESSURE

25. Team use boards to manage in one single
place both impediments and risks,
assessing them by priority and status.
Likelihood probability that a risk can actually happen
Size of Loss number of estimated days needed get back
on track if the risk materialize
Exposure Likelihood * Size of Loss
INFORMATION RADIATORS AND RISKS

26. COOL, THANKS.
WHAT IF WE HAVE TO DEAL WITH A BIG PROGRAM?

27. Risks and impediments that
cannot be solved autonomously
by teams, shall be notified and
managed at the upper level
SYNC EVENTS
Risk Assessment Matrix ROAM Board

28. Integrate the System Increment and Demo it every sprint!
Each Team does integrate its own work with that
of other teams in a whole system increment
which is demoed every iterations to the relevant stakeholders
Level of IntegrationHigh
Low
High
Low
This U-Curve helps deciding
what's the best trade-off between
costs of integration and risks
Sprint 1 Sprint 2 Sprint 3 Sprint n
Team A
Team B
Team C
Team D
Team Product Increment System Product Increment
System Demo
Sprint
Reviews
System Demo
Sprint
Reviews
System Demo
Sprint
Reviews
Fact Based Inspection:
 Progress
 Product
 Process

29. Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) Inception
(sometimes called Sprint Zero), is conducted
before starting effective development.
During this iteration teams perform some initial
work; requirements modeling, architecture
modeling, high level planning, and any other
organizational setup activities.
DAD Inception, just enough work to get the Right Direction

30. Inception Goals:
 Form Team
 Align with Enterprise Direction
 Explore Scope
 Identify Architecture Strategy
 Plan the Release
 Develop Test Strategy
 Develop Common Vision
 Secure Funding
Adapted, Disciplined Agile Consortium
Eight goals to Reduce Uncertainty and Increase Awareness

31. Risk is a difficult concept to grasp for human beings.
It belongs to a place with blurred contours, often not
visible with the eyes of the present.
We think Agile plays a vital, key role here.
It gives us infrared vision superpower to understand,
interpret and see in advance risks and adapting our
approach to better face them.

32. Emiliano Soldi
@AgileTriathlete
https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilianosoldi/