Rethinking the Mitigation Phase in Software Risk Management Process: A Case Study

Software risk management is a multi-phase process. An effective risk management approach leads to an optimum risk mitigation plan. However, the high rate of failures in IT projects shows the unsuccessfulness of the activities of risk mitigation. The reason is the existence of hidden and unseen threats and risks in the process, which are ignored in most of the models. The proposed model considered the typical phases of risk management while focused mostly on the mitigation phase. The model facilitates the development of risk mitigation plan called synthesized approach through four novel activities. The circumferential risks, arisen opportunities and amplified opportunities are determined. In order to verify the model, a case study has been done on an active industrial design company. Then the circumferential risks and opportunities were detected and prioritized based on the obtained values. The case study proves the model in practice and shows its applicability.