Identifying Software Project Risks with the Process Model

The paper presents a process model-based approach to software project risk identification. The approach involves explicit modeling of software processes and identifying risk by two dedicated techniques. The paper introduces a meta-model that allows expressing the process risk. Then, two systematic risk identification techniques are proposed and presented in the form of detailed procedures. Both techniques refer to the process model to focus the analyst’s attention in the investigation of the process risks. The first technique uses metrics of process structure while the second focuses on the differences between the actual and the referential model. Further on, the paper reports on the case study of practical application of the proposed approach in a real-life software project. The case study results demonstrate that the proposed approach helped to reveal new, previously undetected risk factors judged important by the project managers. Finally, the paper summarizes the approach as well as provides the issues open for further research.