Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects

Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects

This is the digital version of the printed book (Copyright © 2003).<b> <br /> <br />If There’s No Risk On Your Next Project, Don’t Do It.</b> <p style="margin:0px;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;">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.</p> <p style="margin:0px;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;">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. </p> <p style="margin:0px;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;">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.</p> <p style="margin:0px;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;">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.</p> <p style="margin:0px;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;">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.</p> <p style="margin:0px;"> </p>