Risk management during software development: Results of a survey in software houses from Germany, Austria and Switzerland

Abstract

Resource constraints during development require an elaborated decision-making process supported by risk information. The goal of this paper is to investigate the state-of-practice of risk management during development in software houses. For this purpose, we conducted a survey in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland where 57 software houses participated. The survey results are triangulated by results from literature and interviews with a subset of the survey participants. Results from the survey show that less than a third of the companies performs risk management during development. Main reasons for not performing risk management are lack of resources, need and knowledge. An important application area of risk assessment results is the prioritization of test cases. Finally, technical product risks as well as project risks are commonly applied risk assessment criteria.