Who Should be Involved in Defining Mitigations
Where risks are internal to the project, they generally can be discussed and ratified by the team. Where risks are external to the project, or require a financial outlay, it will be necessary to involve subject matter experts such as the design team and the finance department, even to CFO level if necessary. It is also beneficial to involve stakeholders in the mitigation sessions, as they are then both committed to the mitigation responses and kept informed as to what the plan of action will be. While the plan would be communicated to them according to the risk management process, engaging them in the mitigation activity makes them part of the solution.
Drawing up the Mitigation Plan
Once mitigations for all the identified risks have been discussed and agreed, they must be documented and a mitigation plan must be drawn up. Ownership of the risk and activities and process that will be invoked in the case of a risk occurring are included in the plan.
Monitoring the Risk Status
Risk management is not static: a risk can become more severe or reduce during the project, and this is monitored throughout the project. A periodic risk meeting should be held to reassess at least the more critical risks and update their scores as the project progresses. The natural time to do this is during the Sprint Review meetings and/or the Retrospectives, but a separate meeting can also be held where required. The beauty of Agile and Scrum, is that the approach is risk-based, which both reduces the overall project risk and makes risk management simpler.
How Scrum Facilitates Mitigation
Agile development is rapid and short-term, thus minimising the chances of a risk occurring. Scrum reinforces this by tackling the highest priority tasks in the Product Backlog first. High priority items in the Product Backlog are prioritised by the Product Owner because they are the highest risk components, either because there is uncertainty about the requirement or they are pivotal to the successful product design. Completing high-risk work early on in the project improves the chances of project success.
The fact that the project is completed as soon as possible means that risks that are either low in impact or low in probability can be accepted, rather than avoided or limited, because the chances are good that the project will complete before those risks occur. Scrum risk management is therefore simpler and less onerous than traditional project management, although it uses the same techniques.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course:
Course Contents
Section 1: Agile Project Management
Section 2: Using the Agile Manifesto to Deliver Change
Section 3: The 12 Agile Principles
Section 4: The Agile Fundamentals
Section 5: The Declaration of Interdependence
Section 6: Agile Development Frameworks
Section 7: Introduction to Scrum
Section 8: Scrum Projects
Section 9: Scrum Project Roles
Section 10: Meet the Scrum Team
Section 11: Building the Scrum Team
Section 12: Scrum in Projects, Programs & Portfolios
Section 13: How to Manage an Agile Project
Section 14: Leadership Styles
Section 15: The Agile Project Life-cycle
Section 16: Business Justification with Agile
Section 17: Calculating the Benefits With Agile
Section 18: Quality in Agile
Section 19: Acceptance Criteria and the Prioritised Product Backlog
Section 20: Quality Management in Scrum
Section 21: Change in Scrum
Section 22: Integrating Change in Scrum
Section 23: Managing Change in Scrum
Section 24: Risk in Scrum
Section 25: Risk Assessment Techniques
Section 26: Initiating an Agile Project
Section 27: Forming the Scrum Team
Section 28: Epics and Personas
Section 29: Creating the Prioritised Product Backlog
Section 30: Conduct Release Planning
Section 31: The Project Business Case
Section 32: Planning in Scrum
Section 33: Scrum Boards
Section 34: Sprint Planning
Section 35: User Stories
Section 36: User Stories and Tasks
Section 37: The Sprint Backlog
Section 38: Implementation of Scrum
Section 39: The Daily Scrum
Section 40: The Product Backlog
Section 41: Scrum Charts
Section 42: Review and Retrospective
Section 43: Scrum of Scrums
Section 44: Validating a Sprint
Section 45: Retrospective Sprint
Section 46: Releasing the Product
Section 47: Project Retrospective
Section 48: The Communication Plan
Section 49: Formal Business Sign-off
Section 50: Scaling Scrum
Section 51: Stakeholders
Section 52: Programs and Portfolios