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Managing Risk

Abstract

Risk is generally defined as the measure of the potential inability to achieve overall program objectives within defined cost, schedule, and technical constraints. What is missing from this definition are risks associated with failing to identify and capture evolving user, system, and technical requirements, which are often driven by evolving end-user or marketplace demands. Ignoring these evolving needs introduces risks, meaning you may be developing an obsolete product or one that only partially meets end-user needs. There are many different flavors of risk management, but each of these includes considerations for defining and assessing risk (including the likelihood it will occur and the potential impact if it does), determining how to decide which risks to mitigate and how to do so, and risk monitoring. This chapter focuses on managing three types of risks to systems engineering and development: project development risk, technical risk, and obsolescence risk.

Leads

Michael Orosz

University of Southern California

Publications

  1. Agile Alliance ( 2023 ). Agile 101 . Corryton, TN : The Agile Alliance .

  2. DAU ( 2003 ). Risk Management Guide for DoD Acquisition , 5e . Belvoir, VA, USA : Defense Acquisition University (DAU)/U.S. Department of Defense , Fifth Edition, Version 2.

  3. Forsberg , K. and Mooz , H. ( 1994 ). The relationship of system engineering to the project cycle . Proceedings of the 12th INTERNET World Congress on Project Management , Oslo, Norway (9–11 June 1994).

  4. Kendall , R.P. , Post , D.E. , Carver , J.C. et al. ( 2007 ). A Proposed Taxonomy for Software Development Risks for High-Performance Computing (HPC) Scientific/Engineering Applications . CMU/SEI-2006-TN-039. Pittsburgh, PA : Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Carnegie Mellon University .

  5. Mooz , H. and Forsberg , K. ( 1991 ). The relationship of systems engineering to the project cycle . Joint Conference of National Council on Systems Engineering (NCOSE) and the American Society for Engineering Management (ASEM) , Chattanooga, TN (21–23 October 1991).

  6. OWASP ( 2022 ). DevSecOps Pipeline . Wakefield, MA : Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) .

  7. Scaled Agile ( 2022 ). What is SAFe ® ? . Boulder, CO : Scaled Agile .

  8. SEBoK Editorial Board ( 2023 ). Risk (glossary) . In: The Guide to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) , v. 2.8 (ed. R.J. Cloutier ). Hoboken, NJ : The Trustees of the Stevens Institute of Technology . BKCASE is managed and maintained by the Stevens Institute of Technology Systems Engineering Research Center, the International Council on Systems Engineering, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Systems Council.

  9. Wang , S. , Avrunin , G.S. , and Clarke , L.A. ( 2008 ). Plug-and-play architectural design and verification . In: Architecting Dependable Systems V (ed. R. Lemos ). Berlin, Germany : Springer-Verlag .

  10. Wu , J. , Yang , Y. , Cheng , X. , et al. ( 2020 ). The development of digital twin technology review . Proceedings of the 2020 Chinese Automation Congress (CAC), Shanghai, China .

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The Systems Engineering Research Center (SERC) was established in the Fall of 2008 as a government-designated University Affiliated Research Center (UARC). The SERC has produced 15 years of research, focused on an updated systems engineering toolkit (methods, tools, and practices) for the complex cyber-physical systems of today and tomorrow.


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