Lightweight risk management: The development of agile risk tool agents

Abstract

Risk management is an important process in Software Engineering. However, it can be perceived as somewhat contrary to the more lightweight processes used in Agile methods. Thus an appropriate and realistic risk management model is required as well as tool support that minimizes human effort. We propose the use of software agents to carry out risk management tasks and make use of the data collected from the project environment to detect risks. This paper describes the underlying risk management model in an Agile Risk Tool (ART) where software agents are used to support identification, assessment and monitoring of risk. It demonstrates the interaction between agents, agents' compliance with the designated rules and how agents react to changes in project environment data. The result shows that agents are of use for detecting risk and reacting dynamically to changes in project environment thus, help to minimize the human effort in managing risk.