Product risk

Most professional project managers are actively handling project risks together with the team. And some of those risks are usually related to the product.

But in complex product development I would recommend to have rofuces workshop(s) on product risks – where the focus is on everything that can go wrong in the product. You can do this using standard impact/probability approach.

I prefer doing it as open brainstorming – and not trying to categorize or focus on subsystems initially – since some risks might span different areas. You might for example conclude that all money handling parts (several subsystems) and a transaction service (one subsystem) are the highest priority risks.

I strongly recommend involving the Product Owner in this analysis since he/she is the only one who can assess the impact of potential issues. And is likely needed for trade-off decisions.

By doing this and by agreeing with the Product Owner on how to handle risks you get valuable input to:

– new requirements (for example on security or uptime)
– technical solution (for example on parts of the system that might need to be redundant)
– test (you obviously put a lot more effort into verification of high risk parts of the product)

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