Blogs Scaling Agile and Risk Management: An Overview

Scaling Agile and Risk Management: An Overview

September 16, 2024

Risk management in agile software development can be a complex topic for most organizations, especially at the enterprise level. But by embedding structured risk management practices within each phase of Agile processes, using scalable frameworks, and deploying tools that support transparency and collaboration, organizations can begin to address these challenges before they even occur.

The various frameworks for scaled Agile (including Disciplined Agile Delivery, Large-scale Scrum, and the Scaled Agile Framework®) enable large organizations to increase their development speed and productivity, manage uncertainty more adeptly, and reduce risks throughout the process. Agile offers some great ways to organically incorporate risk management practices across the various phases of product development. These benefits lead many practitioners to believe they don’t need a formal risk management framework and that Agile alone is enough. However, organizations need to deploy a scaled Agile framework for risk management at every stage of the product development cycle to properly manage risk. Without this structured approach, Agile development teams expose themselves to a host of unforeseen risks, potentially jeopardizing their projects' success and undermining the agility they strive to maintain.

For example, imagine a team developing a healthcare app that collects sensitive patient data. Following Agile practices, the team focuses on rapid iteration and continuous delivery, pushing new features quickly to meet market demands. However, without formal risk management safeguards throughout the development cycle, it might overlook the potential for data breaches, assuming the Agile process will catch any issues. When a critical vulnerability slips through unnoticed, the app launches with a flaw that compromises patient information. This damages the company’s reputation and may lead to severe financial repercussions. Agile practices promote quick adaptation but don’t inherently provide thorough, systemic risk management protections needed to prevent costly mistakes.

While Agile practices naturally promote iterative risk management, software development teams shouldn’t make the mistake of assuming that they’ve sufficiently addressed risk. Instead, they should build on their existing Agile methods to incorporate a structured risk management framework—one that uses Agile solutions designed to identify and mitigate risk.

What is Agile project delivery?

Agile project delivery—the process of completing projects through iterative cycles—emphasizes flexibility, continuous feedback, and adaptive planning. By breaking work down into smaller, manageable sprints, teams can deliver the functional aspects of a project often and adjust based on stakeholder input and changing requirements. For example, a software company using Agile processes can quickly release a new app feature in small increments, allowing it to gather user feedback early and often. This approach lets the team refine and improve the feature based on real-world usage, leading to a successful product launch. Without utilizing Agile project delivery, the company might develop an entire app feature over many months (or years) without user feedback, only to find major issues or unmet needs after the product is launched—ultimately leading to costly rework and delays. By focusing on flexibility and continuous improvement, Agile can help mitigate risks like these by allowing teams to identify and mitigate potential issues before they even emerge.

What is Agile risk management?

Agile risk management is the continuous process of identifying, assessing, and addressing risks throughout each iteration or sprint, ensuring that potential issues are mitigated early and do not hinder the project’s process. At a high level, the key to effectively incorporating risk management processes in Agile is simple. Start by identifying, evaluating, and monitoring risks at both the project and iteration level. This way, teams can proactively mitigate risks before they even arise, rather than relying on traditional end-of-project risk assessments.

What is the role of risk management in Agile projects?

Agile projects are centered around adaptability and continuous improvement—but what happens when vulnerabilities emerge? Robust risk management efforts ensure that potential obstacles are identified and addressed early in the development process and before they become critical.

Agile and risk management process

To understand how to scale Agile and risk management processes, it’s important first to understand where to implement these efforts on a foundational level. Risk management must be incorporated at the beginning of the project, throughout the development process, and at the end of each project. Let’s explore the individual stages where Agile risk management is vital:

Risk Identification

After the stakeholders have determined an exhaustive list of project requirements, it is time to identify the risks associated with them as well. Are there any potential technical challenges or limitations that could arise? Are there any interdependencies on third-party tools or vendors that could introduce risks? How could changes in project scope or requirements impact the timeline or budget? It’s important to analyze each requirement to uncover potential threats, as all types of seemingly unrelated factors can impact a project’s success.

Risk Planning

Once all known risks have been identified, stakeholders must create an action (or contingency) plan to mitigate them. Then, they create a Project Risk Register, which is updated throughout the project, to serve as a central reference for managing risks and ensuring they are monitored and addressed consistently.

Risk Monitoring

Risk monitoring occurs throughout the project. This involves keeping an eye on known and new risks and updating the Project Risk Register accordingly.

Risk Reviewing

Once the Risk Register has been updated and the project is complete, it’s time to evaluate how risks were handled to develop lessons learned and best practices for the future.

Agile and risk management on an iterative level

Once risk management practices are established at the project level, it’s crucial to incorporate them into every iteration or Scrum cycle, regardless of the Agile framework you use. Sprint planning meetings, the daily scrum, sprint reviews, and sprint retrospectives are all key stages when risks should be evaluated and managed incrementally.

Larger organizations have started adopting frameworks such as LeSS (Large Scale Scrum), DAD (Disciplined Agile Delivery), and SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) to support the popularity of Agile process models on an enterprise-wide scale.

While project management methods like Scrum and Kanban can work wonders for single teams or smaller companies, scaling these methods to manage risk across multiple Agile teams working on the same project can be challenging. The transparency and accountability that Agile promotes become harder to maintain in larger, more complex environments. However, with the right tools and strategies, these challenges can be transformed into opportunities for stronger collaboration and more effective risk management across the organization.

What is ROAM risk management in Agile projects?

The ROAM risk management model is a collaborative and proactive way to scale Agile and risk management in large organizations. ROAM stands for Resolve, Own, Accept, and Mitigate—four options for how to face potential risks and handle them properly throughout any scaled Agile software development model. Identified risks are assigned to one of the following categories:

Resolved

The risk is no longer considered a threat and doesn’t require further action (other than documenting actions taken to resolve it).

Owned

If the risk cannot be resolved in a meeting, a team member is assigned to “own” or handle it and ensure that it is properly managed.

Accepted

If the risk cannot be handled or neutralized, the team must build in contingencies to manage it on a case-by-case basis.

Mitigated

Finally, a plan is formed to diminish the threat of the risk.

Once the risks have been sorted into the above categories, the team votes on which risks are the most important to work on. Those falling into the first three categories (Resolved, Accepted, or Mitigated) are dealt with during the Program Increment (PI) planning session. In contrast, those that fall into the “Owned” category take slightly longer to resolve. 

Of course, new risks are continuously uncovered, and the ROAM model is used to manage them as they appear. Many organizations that use enterprise Kanban tools leverage the same method to organize their risk management efforts by creating a ROAM board during the PI planning stage. This is where the right tooling for visualization, transparency, and collaboration becomes essential.

Collaborative and smooth Agile and risk management is possible

The approach is comprehensive, but executing a fully scaled ROAM model can be a daunting challenge. To put these methods into practice, developers rely on Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions for structure and capabilities that make collaborative risk management achievable even at the largest enterprise scale.

Integrated ALM tools support risk management by establishing a central, shared development platform for all contributing stakeholders. By managing and providing insights into all phases of product delivery, ALM tools like Codebeamer help incorporate mature Agile risk management with processes that are scalable across the enterprise.

Codebeamer features advanced risk management functionality, a flexible Kanban board that makes ROAM sessions easy to manage, and customizable risk trackers that can be adapted to fit unique needs. These elements ensure proper risk documentation with high levels of traceability and coverage.

By identifying risks early in the process, organizations can stay vigilant and reduce their impact or mitigate them entirely. This enables quick compliance with risk management regulations like ISO 14971 and IEC 60812, as well as safety-related requirements such as ISO 26262, IEC 61508, IEC 62304, IEC 60601, and DO-178C. As software becomes more complex, these regulations are more difficult to maneuver. Compliance isn’t just another requirement to check off—it’s a strategic imperative that enables a company to compete in an increasingly competitive market. Embracing a comprehensive Agile risk management strategy not only safeguards your projects but also empowers your organization to stay innovative and competitive in a quickly evolving industry.

Agile has become the de facto development methodology for the software world, but adopting the process on an enterprise-wide scale can be challenging. Simply practicing Agile development methods isn’t enough to ensure you aren’t overlooking or introducing costly risks into your processes. Instead, consider Agile as a powerful foundation, which can be extended with specific practices designed to manage risk. The good news is that there are powerful software solutions for making sure your risk management efforts are exhaustive and successful.

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Emily Himes Emily is a Content Marketing Specialist on PTC’s Commercial Marketing team based in Boston, MA. Her writing supports a variety of PTC’s product and service offerings.

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