Understand the Business Context

Software risk management occurs in a business context. Risks are unavoidable and are a necessary part of software development. Management of risks, including the notions of risk aversion and technical trade off, is deeply impacted by business motivation. Thus, the first stage of software risk management involves getting a handle on the business situation. Commonly, business goals are neither obvious nor explicitly stated. In some cases, you may even have difficulty expressing these goals clearly and consistently. During this stage, the analyst must extract and describe business goals, priorities, and circumstances in order to understand what kinds of software risks to care about and which business goals are paramount. Business goals include, but are not limited to, increasing revenue, meeting service level agreements, reducing development costs, and generating high return on investment.