Agile methods have created different new challenges in the field of risk management. In modern software application development projects, security has become a significant part of the product. Software development projects are very complex and can quickly go off track if something went wrong thus, risk management is an integral part of the software application development process. Software security and risk management are not just something a business might do if even if time and resources are available. Risk management must be introduced at the planning stage and must be evaluated and assessed throughout the whole development cycle.

Agile software development methods are focused on delivering the possible maximum benefit to the business. Using existing models together with some new ideas, application developers can come up with a solution to manage the risks even before the problem starts.

Agile Risk Management

The agile risk management approach is based on frequent feedback and iteration. The development team together with the product owners are working together to help keep the project moving and achieve the goals that will deliver the highest value first. In this approach, the high-level goals of the project and constraints are defined in the planning stage and the progress is tracked against these factors and is adjusted depending on the situation to ensure completion and success.

Agile project plans are revisited and adjusted frequently. This means that a usable software system should also be available at the same time. The combination of frequently iterating the plan and having continuous working software means that completion can happen earlier than the deadline even if the plan changes dramatically. If something goes wrong in an agile project, the developers can still deliver a software system that has the highest priority features that have the highest value possible for the business.

It is also important to note that the team members can’t be part of the agile workforce unless they acknowledge that the project will always face uncertainties during the process. Rather than taking comfort in a plan, they take comfort in the fact that they can adapt to these changes and still be successful.  A challenge in adopting the agile method is to get everyone in the team and the business side to get involved and agree that agile planning is the more reasonable approach to software development. This means establishing agile practices for iterative planning is part of the project.

The Five Steps of Agile Project Management

1. Identify

   Identifying the risks is the most basic step in agile project management. Risk can have two-dimensional influences: The first dimension is a simple assessment of factors that can either be Helpful or Harmful for the project and the second dimension is the identification of the source of the Risk that can either be External or Internal.

   Identifying these a two-dimensional assessment together provides the classic SWOT Analysis of the project: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It is important to understand these factors that even though we may have no control over the threats, we can develop processes to manage or minimize the effects on the software development project.

2. Classify

   After identifying the risks, it needs to be categorized according to the likelihood and level of impact it may have on the project. These categories may or may not be prescriptive, but these can be divided into factors like scope, impact, resources, solution, budget, timeline, and privacy and security. Although scope and resources are primarily relevant to the software development team, these can have a significant impact on the other categories that may affect the overall outcome of the project.

3. Quantify

   How do businesses go about measuring the risks? Impact and probability can help measure the risks effects and other factors. The impact of risk is a measure of its effect on the project. It can range from minimal, where the consequences would be very small up to extreme where effects will surely affect the success of the project. Risks on a minimal range can be solved faster than the higher-level ones. Although these levels of risks cannot hinder the success of the project, these can turn into a more difficult one if left unnoticed.

   If there is a very high probability of a certain risk, then it should have the attention of the team. Conversely, if there is a very low probability of the risk being realized, then it is likely that it should receive less attention from the team. We thus need to ensure that the greatest attention is focused on the Risks with the highest occurrence probability. The following chart provides a suggested scale for assessing the probability of Risk manifestation.

4. Plan and Manage

   There are numerous techniques for risks management. Before the planning started, businesses must remember that it is not possible to eliminate all risks. Risk planning is all about contingency planning. After identifying, assessing, and quantifying the possible risks for the project, risk analysis leads to deriving a few effective risk responses.

   Risk management requires the involvement of stakeholders and software developers in interactive ways, as experience is the best means for managing these risks. Risk management should also be integrated with the decision-making processes to manage the projects more effectively, as risk management reveals the different rationales for making appropriate decisions.

5. Act and Fail and Act again

   The act is simply that. It is the actual implementation of the defined risk management and mitigation strategies. Well, it’s not that simple. Human nature is such that we tend to put off the things that aren’t challenging and fun, interesting or that might be just boring or just plain hard work. This is project suicide when it comes to risk management. While it is imperative that high-risk items will be dealt with first, deferring performance testing up to the last stage of the project and finding out that some features are not achievable in the remaining time frame can be the death of the project.

   “What this teaches us, is that although failure can be painful and although we as people we have developed an aversion to it, it actually can allow us to unlock the great potential” – Dr. Anna Powers  The “Fail Early” phrase is becoming very popular in the world of venture capital. What do potato chips, Post-It Notes, pacemakers, penicillin, and Silly Putty all have in common? They were all created by making mistakes. In fact, in each case, the inventor was attempting to create something completely different and thought that he had failed with the final product. Of course, as decades have gone by and profits have been made, the benefit of hindsight tells us that these so-called failures were actually triumphs. It’s like that old adage about Thomas Edison and the light bulb: When questioned on his many failures, he retorted that he hadn’t failed 10,000 times, but succeeded in finding 10,000 methods that wouldn’t work. – Forbes.

   It might sound crazy at first but in the essence of agile risk management, it means figuring out as early as possible during the process if a certain solution will succeed or not.  These findings are essentially the go-no-go for your project. If success is not possible, either stop what you’re doing and do the next possible step and move on to something else. This could also be a good opportunity to rethink the project and come at it from a different angle. Either way, do the gnarly, risky, and difficult stuff upfront.

   Failure has the added benefit that it helps you define different boundaries of the system and sets team expectations as to what is possible and realistic and what is impossible and unrealistic. It could even bring light unrealistic success criteria KPIs and can even change the definition of project success. When this happens, the project will live under a revised and more realistic set of approaches to managing stakeholder expectations. It may also stimulate commitments like a larger budget or easier access to key people.

   As obvious and as simple as this may sound, it is amazing how often such high critical risk items are left until the final stages of the software development project. Over the years, this is one of the biggest reasons for project failure. Do the risky stuff first, fail early, and do it again.

6. Repeat

   This part of the agile risk management process is very lightweight and very quick to perform. As discussed above, identifying the risks is the most basic step, and implementing appropriate risk planning and mitigation strategies for each risk identified is essential to the success of projects, may it be related to software development or not. Done properly, it is a continuous virtuous circle of processes to constantly identify, manage and minimize the risks in different projects.

   For software application development, an agile plan will only work if the code is adaptable enough. This means technical practices should also be established to make it possible to deploy a system frequently and evolve the code to meet the changing software requirements easily.

Challenges grow together with the business. The need to constantly keep up with the market while at the same time making sure that the company’s people remain competent and productive are just some of the difficulties they need to face head-on. Most of the time, strategy is not enough. Having the proper mindset as a leader and as a team is very vital to business success.

What is a mindset? Mindsets are the assumptions and expectations we have for ourselves and others. These are the set of attitudes that guides our behavior and greatly influences our responses to daily events. According to Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, your beliefs play a pivotal role in what you want and whether you achieve it. She believes that success, either personal or business, is not determined by innate intellect or talents. Rather, the success of business and individuals depend on their mindset and the degree they believe in whatever they can do to grow and strengthen their abilities. Individuals with a fixed mindset believe that their qualities are inborn, unchangeable, and fixed. On the other hand, those with a growth mindset believe that different abilities can be learned and developed depending on how committed they are to working on them.

What is this Agile Mindset? Being agile is about learning and adapting. That agile mindset is the mindset of adaptation, change, and most importantly, continuous learning. It is significantly beneficial in software development businesses, but the approach is also very popular with big brands worldwide. It is also having the mindset that every learning approach will allow individuals and businesses to easily overcome challenges. “I think the essence of agile development is learning. That's what agile has brought to the table,” that's the closest we will ever get to being scientific is to deliver small increments, to get feedback on that, to constantly learn about what works and what doesn't work in our environment.” – Linda Rising, popular keynote speaker, an author, and a consultant with Stickyminds.

Agile is, without a doubt, a set of different principles and combined practices. At the same time, it’s also a working mindset that puts continuous learning first and focuses on adaptability next. If one can take on this mindset, both at work and in everyday life, success even in the face of change will be much easier to achieve.

People Factors in Agile Software Development and Team Project Management

According to the Agile Manifesto (2011), Agile was derived from a set of principles that focus on self-organization, small integrated teams, small and continuous improvements, iterative and incremental delivery, intense collaboration, and customer value. To put it simply, being agile is not just about having weekly sprints or scrums when needed. Being agile instead is a preset mindset. It is a mindset to deliver the highest quality work possible and be flexible at the same time. Organizations have transformed their software development processes from a conventional mindset to agile. Although not all of their success, results have delivered invaluable know-how on the effects of this mindset for the organization as a whole.

Agile project management is a conceptual framework in software development and software engineering where the application software is built within a relatively short period of time and has several iterations that yield a stable release of the software.

In a study published in 2011 (Conboy et al., 2011), it was found that the increasing use of Agile Mindset approaches and growing pressure to adopt Agile Management, contribute to the strong need for human resource departments and project managers to address different challenges people in the organization are currently facing.  There is a need to identify the existing and new problems that the agile transition may cause.

A list of the most important people challenges in agile was proposed as follows: developer fear caused by the transparency of skill deficiencies, the need for developers to be a "master of all trades", increased reliance on social skills, a lack of business knowledge among developers, the need to understand and learn values and principles of Agile, not just the practices, lack of developer motivation to use Agile methods and the need for Agile compliant performance evaluation. 

Conboy et al., 2011

An agile mindset includes flexibility in every task. The way on how the team responds to certain situations and delivers the highest possible value to the client in small iterations at the soonest time possible to fetch and improve based on continuous feedback, is a part of an agile mindset.

An agile mindset focuses not just on the completion of the task. It places more emphasis on what value the certain task is going to bring to the end-users, clients, and the ones who worked hard to create it. And so, this is the reason why the agile mindset is based on giving and receiving continuous constructive feedback. The smaller these feedback cycles (either by regular sprint reviews or iterations), the better the team will be able to track the progress and respond properly to the situation.

It is very important to start and develop a proper agile mindset within the team and organization as a whole to undergo a true mindset to agile transformation. Communication plays a significant role in an agile team. All agile mindset methodologies whether they be sprints, extreme programming or scrums are based on proper communication processes and flexibility, all of these can help your team to become agile.

Companies are continuously looking forward to new ways and technologies to improve their team’s efficiency productivity. Although it is possible for teams to be agile without adopting the mindset, it is only with having the right agile mindset will the team be able to deliver amazing, top-notch results to clients and customers.

Top 3 Reasons Why is an Agile Culture Important?

Startup or not, business founders and leaders strive for perfection. Huge investment and hours of hard work are on the line, so no one can be blamed for them having these expectations. In an agile environment, that concept of perfection doesn’t exist. It is more about learning from feedback and making the most out of it.

Why is an Agile Culture Important? Being agile is a much more successful approach for a few reasons.

First-Mover Advantage

First-mover advantage is one such concept. This is probably the biggest advantage of taking an agile mindset approach - having the first-mover advantage over their competitors, giving them the edge on technological leadership and market popularity. While their competitors are busy planning and perfecting their strategy, businesses using the agile approach are already out there making big sales and taking the lead.

These businesses will have a very high potential of making a lasting impression on the market-leading to brand recognition and loyalty. It will also give them the advantage of controlling resources such as strategic business location or perhaps an exclusive contract with key suppliers and highly talented employees.

Team Motivator

The Agile Approach means having small feedback cycles that can be motivating and exciting for both current and new members of the team. The Progress Principle is valuable for team motivation. For example, working on the same big project for months without seeing tangible results to show off can be quite demotivating.

Teresa Amabile, the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration and a Director of Research at Harvard Business School through Forbes said, “We found that work is truly important to most people. They want to succeed and they want to make a contribution to something. Throughout the day, people react to events that happen and try to make sense out of them. These emotional reactions and perceptions affect their motivation for the work. People are more creative, productive, committed to the work, and collegial toward their coworkers in a positive working environment. What we found was that, of all the events that occur on best days, one stood out well above the rest – simply making progress on meaningful work. We call this the “progress principle.”

Customer Centricity

Technology has come far enough that it doesn’t only cater to bots and machines. Even the tech giant Google is all about customer experience. For the agile mindset approach, customers get a constant sense of security whenever a company keeps releasing new features. The agile mindset approach also allows businesses to adjust to customers’ needs and demands, keeping them happy and loyal to the business longer.

Truth to be told, it turns out that not many companies treat customer-centricity seriously. This is where the advantages of using the agile approach shine the brightest. Having customers at the center of each and every change made during the process, the business naturally attracts loyal customers returning loyal and constant sales.

For businesses and teams new to the agile mindset approach, difficulty in self-management is expected. This is where keeping an optimistic attitude is so important. It seems that failure tends to be more public than success. Or at least that’s what we perceive it to be - Forbes. Some or worst, most of the things may not always work, but they should not give up. It is easy to become demotivated and downhearted, but instead, team members, especially management leaders, should keep in mind that these failures make them learn and experience something.

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

Robert F. Kennedy