Anticipating risk
Common sense
- gut feel, something doesn't feel right, a sense of uneasiness
Past experience
- learning from our mistakes, or better still, other's
Historical data
- our memories are unreliable, our perceptions flawed, our experience limited
- database of past events
Tools and aids
- check-lists, expert systems, Event Trees, Fault Trees
Independent assessors
- from elsewhere in the organisation or bought in
- may be able to spot things we miss (due to over-familiarity or a reluctance to admit to our failings)
- not always very effective (due to unfamiliarity, or over-emphasis on irrelevancies)
Analogues
- comparing with dissimilar risk situations eg. motor insurance
Creative thinking
- spotting unprecedented risks by asking "crazy" questions
Exercise:
Identify two typical hazards to a software project,
and suggest safeguards against each
Try to find safeguards that
- reduce the likelihood that the hazard will occur
- reduce the likelihood that the hazard will lead to an accident or loss
- reduce the amount of that loss
The human factor
Studies show that people are a major source of risk,
and are the least predictable factor
Consider
- your work on teams
- cases
- London Ambulance Service
- Wessex Regional Health Authority
- project management
- lost expertise if staff leave
- misunderstandings with users
- political manoeuvring
Other topics