Software Project Risk Management Practice in Ethiopia

Abstract

In a country like Ethiopia, where information and communication systems are in the early stage of development, software projects may face several challenges. Risk is one of the factors that challenges project performance, and even causes failure. Risk management helps project managers to control the effect of risks. However, risk management appears to be the least practiced component of project management. To help understand the software risk management practice in the developing countries (DC) context, this study explores the risk management practice of Ethiopian software projects. It also investigates the level of adoption of formal risk management models and which steps are included in the ad-hoc risk management exercise. Finally, it looks into the relationship between risk management practice and project success. We conducted a survey of 45 banks, insurance companies and United Nations agency offices in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In this study, a very low rate of application of formal risk management models was observed. We observed a different perception of risk management whereby only watching projects to see if any risks occur during implementation without performing risk identification and mitigation or response plan was considered as a risk management practice by project managers. It was also found that some project managers were not able to confidently tell whether risk management processes have taken place in the projects they manage.

Evaluation of Risk Management Practices in Information Systems Project in the Public Sector

“…(P1) This was also discovered by Fadun (2013), who believed that the presence of experts throughout the implementation of the project informally provided RM information and significantly impacted the RM practices. This study also discovered findings similar to Teklemariam and Mnkandla ( 2017) and Wet & Visser (2013) on the insignificant acceptance rate of formal RM during project development. This finding shows that although the RM process seemed to be well-practiced but, in some cases, no formal model or standard were used.…”

Risk management in the software life cycle: A systematic literature review

“…On the other hand, authors such as Teklemariam et al [41], Arnuphaptrairong [42] and Kajko-Mattsson et al [43] carried out empirical studies by means of surveys, focusing on the identification and analysis of risk management practices in software companies. These studies all come to the same conclusion, which is that there is limited competence and knowledge on the part of project managers when it comes to attempts to perform risk management properly.…”

“…In a nutshell, it is evident that the work mentioned above has focused mainly on (i) Risk identification [31,[35][36][37], as well as on strategies for risk mitigation in GSD [31]; (ii) identification of the challenges that have an impact on risk assessment and the establishing of what particular risk management strategies are used in DSD in order to support decisions (DSS) [38]; (iii) identification and listing of the risks in software product lines (SPL), while also establishing what their practices and management strategies are [39]; (iv) identification and classification of risks in software projects based on components (Offthe-Shelf, OTS) [40]; (v) identification of the use of modelling for the simulation of software processes (SPSM) [12]; (vi) identification and analysis of risk management practices at the level of the literature [10,44], as well as at the software company level [41][42][43].…”

Design and Implementation of Web Based Risk Management System Based on Artificial Neural Networks for Software Projects: WEBRISKIT

“…Araştırma sonucu, yazılım risk yönetimi uygulamalarının çok düşük oranda uygulandığı tespit edilmiştir. Ayrıca, genel olarak risk yönetim uygulamalarından olan risk tanımlama, risk azaltma veya risk yanıt planlarının proje yöneticileri tarafından uygulanmadığı; proje sürecinde herhangi bir risk ile karşılaşıldığı durumlarda birtakım eylem planlarının geliştirilerek icra edildiği görülmüştür [21].…”