Risk Management in Agile Projects

Sammanfattning: The necessity of agile risk management has been a debated topic. While some claim that agile methods mitigate risks with their agile techniques and principles, others claim that it is not enough and an explicit risk management process is necessary. The findings of this study show that agile methods do mitigate risks extensively. By working closely with customers, following an iterative and incremental development process and by utilizing certain agile techniques, agile methods are able to fulfil similar purposes that risk management phases do. This study also implies that while agile methods effectively mitigate risks, there are certain benefits with integrating aspects of risk management such as avoiding pitfalls, better understanding requirements and planning the project. However, these benefits must be compared with the value generated by other tasks in the backlog. Factors such as the project size, complexity and the customer are found to be the main factors affecting the necessity of agile risk management. Despite the lack of an explicit risk management process in agile methods, the study found that the investigated companies carry out certain aspects of agile risk management through pre-project planning and treating risks like regular backlog items.