Integrating Risk Management in Scrum Framework

Abstract

Agile methods emphasize on time intensive development over lengthy documentation and traditional project management activities, unlike traditional methods. With the advent of teams managing large scale projects in distributed environment, the need of certain project management activities becomes invincible for agile methods. Agile principles follow quick delivery and frequent customer feedback. which makes requirements change unavoidable. Changing requirements in agile based distributed environments gives rise to risks. However, agile methods lack a formal approach to risks management. Therefore, in this paper we integrate risk management process in Scrum framework, which is one of the widely used agile method. The integration of risk management with Scrum framework is validated through a controlled experiment performed on undergraduate students. The results of the experiment showed critical risks being identified in later sprints and gross risk value for project increasing if risks not mitigated. This showed that an iterative risk management process integrated in Scrum framework may lead to successful projects with lesser failures.