Start managing your risks

We all want to be better at what we do, so we climb the stairs of maturity, but sometimes the steps don’t need to new levels of quality and productivity. What are the factors that hold us back from gaining higher and higher levels of success?

[bibshow]

Keys to success

I have touched on this topic numerous times on this blog. Some of the findings, and links to older blog posts where you can read more:

• A lack of trust, might be holding you back. [bibcite key=”citeulike:9846510″] Increasing trust will require that you understand the nature of trust in software development. [bibcite key=”citeulike:2824986″]
• It is not enough to apply the best (agile or otherwise) practices in your projects, teams and organization. [bibcite key=”citeulike:12799124″] Software development success also requires that you manage relations with customers, suppliers and employees successfully. [bibcite key=”citeulike:13429418″]
• No matter how good you are, you are entirely lost if you do not manage your technical debt. It is not enough to just manage it, you need to work actively on reducing it — or it will overwhelm you.
• There might be a number of other myths actually holding you back from reaching the levels you want to reach. One recurring myth is that star software developers are introverted.

Maturity and risk management

Something more is often missing, holding people back from reaching their full potential. A lack of active risk management. [bibcite key=”citeulike:13798906″] This study, fresh off the press, shows the impact of proper risk management on success. The study shows “a positive effect of software process maturity level on software project performance while underscoring the negative effect of software development risk on software project performance”.

Start managing your risks

So what does this mean? Start doing proper risk management, even if only in the simplest of ways. Risk management does not need to be hard, complex or time consuming but it has been proven to be necessary for success.

References

[/bibshow]