Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects

Winner of the Software Development Jolt Product Excellence Award

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.

Insights from the Book

"Running away from risk is a no-win proposition. Sometimes you come across a project that looks positively risk-free. In the past, you may have looked at such an endeavor as a 'slam dunk' and thanked your lucky stars to be given an easy project for a change. We've had the same reaction. What dummies we were. Those projects weren't worth doing at all." - from Chapter 1