Managing Organizational Risk Knowledge

Journal of Universal Computer Science, vol. 9, no. 7 (2003), 670-681 submitted: 3/2/03, accepted: 21/7/03, appeared: 28/7/03 © J.UCS

Managing Organizational Risk Knowledge
Luciana de Landa Farias
(Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – COPPE, Brazil [e-mail]) Guilherme H. Travassos
(Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – COPPE, Brazil [e-mail]) Ana Regina Rocha
(Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – COPPE, Brazil [e-mail]) Abstract: Risk planning requires an organization global view, as it is strongly centered in the experience and knowledge acquired in former projects. The larger the experience of the project manager the better will be his ability in identifying risks, estimating their occurrence likelihood and impact, and defining the mitigation and contingency plans. However, project manager risk knowledge cannot stay in an individual level, but it must be made available to the organization. This paper describes an approach to risk planning in software projects based on the organizational risk knowledge reuse. A risk management process focused on the capture and utilization of organizational knowledge together with a support case tool make part of this approach. An experimental study of the relations between risk-causing facts and risks of software projects was accomplished and its results used to define such a tool.
Keywords: Risks Management, Knowledge Management, Risks Planning.
Categories: D.2.0, D.2.9

1

Introduction

It is becoming more difficult to manage project risks due to the size and complexity of current software products [Garvey et al., 1997]. Project managers can inadvertently repeat past mistakes simply because they do not know the mitigation actions which have been successfully applied or even because they do not value risks caused by certain project restrictions and characteristics. Inefficient risk knowledge management contributes to maximize this problem. One of the

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