Managing risks in Norwegian Agile Software Projects: Project Managers´ perspective

The purpose of this study is to understand the role of project risk management in agile software projects. To achieve the purpose, we conducted a qualitative study. We conducted interviews with agile practitioners working with agile projects in Norway ́s software industry. Grounded theory was used to analyse the data. This study aims to study the similarities and dissimilarities between the project risk management process in agile software projects and waterfall software projects, as well as identify the strengths and weaknesses in the current practices being used in agile software projects. Interview results suggested that risk management in agile projects is being done in two ways. One way is adopting implicit risk management strategies, which include communication and collaboration, shorter iterations, frequent delivery, early feedback, and delivering complex parts first. The other way is called explicit risk management strategies, which are relative estimates, burn down charts, SWOT analysis, and risk matrix. Limitations with implicit risk management strategies are also discussed. At the end, guidelines on how to maximize the impact of the risk management process on project outcome are also presented.

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