Top 5 Risks In Software Development

Victor Osetskyi
Aug 29, 2017 · 9 min read

Nowadays we can observe trends for improvement in the methodology of software development, setting up clear goals, restrictions, expectations, and risks Flexible models of software development are the most perspective in this direction.

Existek is a custom software development company helping our customers to solve their business challenges with best in its class software. Contact us to get an instant and free expert consultation about your custom software development project.

Considering the overall structure of flexible methodologies, we can see the relevance of risks in software development assessment. This is especially important now with the rising occurrence of cyber-attacks and the vulnerabilities in software. Unfortunately, it is hard to take into account all of this factors, because of a number of subjective and objective reasons. Partially this happens due to lack of structured knowledge in this area. Here we present the main risks you can meet in software development. We will not only describe them for you to be aware but also we will try to explain how to avoid these risks.

Schedule risks in software development

Speaking of the time risks in software development, it is fair to say all the risks are time-consuming. No matter what was the source of the problem — the key member has left, the budget for the software license is over, etc. In the end, every software development risk comes up to take more time. Everything takes time. But of course, the schedule risk by itself — is also a significant fact that needs attention. The wrong schedule may break the development even at its very first stage.

The managers, while creating a plan quite often guided by the customers’ wishes or by team excessively optimistic estimation. As the result — the significant difference between the planned and real terms increases by 50–80%. If that happens, the misunderstandings with the customer and the resource overspending are inevitable consequences.

In this case, the programmers are often to be blamed for the risks in software development. But this inaccuracy — is management fault. Sometimes the opposite situation is met when the realization term is inflated. In this case, it is very easy to lose a customer because of “someone else” can do this faster and cheaper.

For reducing the schedule risks in software development, it is important to have some time reserved for the case of planning issues and unseen circumstances. And of course, for the best schedule, you should involve the developers to the terms estimation.

Budget risks in software development

As it was mentioned before, the problem that appeared during the development process requires more time to get fixed. The financial difficulties are mostly the reason of all the following software development risks.

The correct financing is a process that requires the utmost attention to avoid the risks in software development. The finance distribution will later lead to the reasonable use of the finances and overall project success. But what if the situation is opposite? What if the finance manager has decided to make a retrenchment on that or another aspect? This is not obligatory to occur, but such actions may lead to the lowering of the used resources quality. In its turn, it leads to another waste of time and waste of the resources for solving emerging problems.

Of course, if it is about the agile software development life cycle model, where the budget is not preliminary assigned, this problem looks like impossible to happen. The development model includes the fact of unpredictable financial input. But unfortunately, the customer’s resources aren’t limitless. That means that the number of the new features implementations, error fixes, testing — everything requires a financial input. And more of the new things appear — the more expensive it becomes. But that’s not all. The new features implementation may cause the conflict of the existing system, which in its turn needs fixes. The situation may repeat until one day the project is found in the “development hell”. After that, there are only two options for the project — the trash can or the painful recovery. This shows that incorrect or uncontrolled financing will ruin the project. The solution for this — is wise finance distribution and putting the project in tight frames at the very beginning. The risks in software development are unpredictable, but there are ways to avoid it by having the reserved funds for such cases.

Technical risks in software development

Every software development process — is a unique case, and the effectiveness of overcoming its issues — is the task that relies on programmer’s qualification. The quite common source of the risks in software development is to make one man finish somebody else’s job. The developers trying to make changes or fixes in the unknown code will make the relatively big amount of mistakes until they get deep into the details of their task. Even if the damage of one mistake is minor, a big number of such mistakes can be a critical fact for the project.

If there is no active demand for the developer’s redistribution to the unknown tasks — the probability of the risks in software project tends to a minimum. The only possible source of it is in management, so its effective minimization lies within the administration alteration. But despite it, such software development risk should be minimized and there are many methods for doing that. The essence of these methods is in rising of the transparency of the project. The more structured project is, the more clear is its source code and documentation — the less time developer spends for getting familiar with it. This activity is very important because statistics say that the project support and maintenance is performed by up to 10 generations of the developers.

For the project to have a clear structure, all the construction stages should be aimed at the simplification. This activity includes building the best project decomposition: modules, classes, identifiers, comments, etc. Ignoring of the complexion minimization leads not only to the issues with the new man next to the old code but with its common writing. The reason is that one man will not handle modification of the big volume of code.

Management risks in software development

The software development management risks may include the bad working environment, insufficient hardware reliability, low effectiveness of the programming etc. Mostly, when such risks in software development exist, in the most of the time they come up to the front.

One of the most significant management risks in software development is within the team structure. As for the first time, the new team members will work slower and make mistakes. If the settled team during the long term of coworking got used to cooperate with each other, it is difficult to let the new member in, no matter how good programmer and/or person he is. The management task is making comfortable conditions for everyone to keep on the development. In the other case, the weak member will draw the team to the inevitable failure.

But this is the coin of two sides. The management can also be far not the best indicate even of the well-going process. The manager is the mediator between the engineering team and a customer or project manager, whose role is making requirements to be implemented. The manager should be clear for the both sides. If the manager did not get clearly the words of the customer but made a fine explanation to the team — the developers have still failed of not following the instructions. Or the situation opposite, if the manager cannot bring the good explanation to the team — the work may not even begin.

The solution is — fine management. If the team manager, or scrum master or someone else is going to work with a team for the first time — they will need a testing period. During this time becomes clear how good the team and its manager understand each other and how well they can perform together.

External risks in software development

Besides the software development risks within the company, there might be obstacles from the outside as well. Unlike the risks within the company where software is developed, the external risks are much more difficult to predict and manage. When the internal software development risks can be avoided somehow, you can only prepare for the external ones and wait when they come. So what can happen?

The world tends to evolve and change. Not only its behavior but its needs change as well. When the market needs change, there is a risk of the software developed is no more in demand. And here are two ways to continue: collapse the project or try to fit it to the existing market requirements. But the second option will need additional financial input and we have already mentioned what it causes.

There is no solution for such problem but good business analysts. These people monitor the market looking for the best way to lead the project development on it. They will not avoid the problem but will bring the solution.

Another example of the risks in software development is the poor level or even full absence of the user feedback. The internal testers team, no matter how big it is, will not find all the bugs and flaws in the software. The reasons are varied, the main one is the lack of time for the proper testing. So for the developer who cares about his product and user’s experience, the feedback is very important. Even if users have a big amount of complaints — it is good if the development team listens to the feedback and makes required changes. But if the feedback is poor — there “is nothing to fix”. Users do not complain about the issue, the developer does not fix it, users stop using the software, and in some time it is not needed anymore.

To prevent this from happening, you should wisely allocate the time for testing. Time reduction to a minimum will leave the tons of bugs in the release version. At the same time, delaying it until no one is interested in the product anymore — is also a bad idea.

Conclusions

In general, it can be noted that the proper and correct application of assessment methods and software development risk management can significantly improve the quality and safety of the product, developed at relatively moderate costs. Thus, given the effectiveness of different methods, it seems that the most effective way of using them is together to keep the software development project safe.

What risks in software development do you consider as the most threatening? Share your opinion in the comments section below. Contact Us directly to discuss how can we help you to minimize risks for your project. Visit our Services Page to learn how our flexible outsourcing strategy eliminates flaws in human resources and development costs.

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Existek is a custom software development company helping our customers to solve their business challenges with best in its class software. Contact us to get an instant and free expert consultation about your custom software development project.

EXISTEK

Full-cycle software development company. Latest company and industry news.

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Victor Osetskyi

Written by

Full-cycle software development company. Latest company and industry news.

EXISTEK

EXISTEK

Full-cycle software development company. Latest company and industry news.

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