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The one-minute risk assessment tool

How do software project managers walk the fine line between calculated risks that can lead to innovative business solutions and outright gambling that can lead to career-ending projects? Existing software project risk frameworks do not provide the kind of simple, pragmatic tools needed to rapidly assess and manage risk. To date, the development of such tools has been hampered by the fact that we know precious little about the relative importance of the key drivers of software project risk. To remedy this, we examined 720 software project assessments by senior IT managers in 60 large companies. Some of our findings were a surprise because the top risk driver we uncovered is one that is often neglected by management, while the least influential risk driver is one that managers often complain about the most. This article examines the relative importance of six key drivers of software project risk and introduces a one-minute risk assessment tool that can be applied to improve software practice.