IT Project Risk Management Checklist

Download Free IT Project Risk Management Checklist, this Project Risk Register, which also can be used as part of What Could Go Wrong (WCGW) identification during Project Risk Management Cycle.

Schedule creation
- Schedule, resources, and product definition have all been dictated by the customer or upper management and are not in balance.
- Schedule is optimistic, ‘best case’, rather than realistic, ‘expected case’.
- Schedule omits necessary tasks.
- Schedule was based on the use of specific team members, but those team members were not available.
- Cannot build a product of the size specified in the time allocated.
- Product is larger than estimated (in lines of code, function points, or percentage of previous project’s size).
- Effort is greater than estimated (per line of code, function point, module, etc.).
- Re-estimation in response to schedule slips is overly optimistic or ignores project history.
- Excessive schedule pressure reduces productivity.
- Target date is moved up with no corresponding adjustment to the product scope or available resources.
- A delay in one task causes cascading delays in dependent tasks.
- Unfamiliar areas of the product take more time than expected to design and implement.

Organization and management
- Project lacks an effective top management sponsor.
- Project languishes too long in fuzzy front end.
- Layoffs and cutbacks reduce team’s capacity.
- Management or marketing insists on technical decisions that lengthen the schedule.
- Inefficient team structure reduces productivity.
- Management review/decision cycle is slower than expected.
- Budget cuts upset project plans.
- Management makes decisions that reduce the development team’s motivation.
- Non-technical third party tasks take longer than expected (budget approval, equipment purchase approval, legal reviews, security clearances, etc.).
- Planning is too poor to support the desired development speed.
- Project plans are abandoned under pressure, resulting in chaotic, inefficient development.
- Management places more emphasis on heroics than accurate status reporting, which undercuts its ability to detect and correct problems.

Development environment
- Facilities are not available on time.
- Facilities are available but inadequate (e.g., no phones, network wiring, furniture, office supplies, etc.).
- Facilities are crowded, noisy, or disruptive.
- Development tools are not in place by the desired time.
- Development tools do not work as expected; developers need time to create workarounds or to switch to new tools.
- Development tools are not chosen based on their technical merits, and do not provide the planned productivity.

End users
- End user insists on new requirements.
- End user ultimately finds product to be unsatisfactory, requiring redesign and rework.
- End user does not buy into the project and consequently does not provide needed support.
- End user input is not solicited, so product ultimately fails to meet user expectations and must be reworked.

Customer
- Customer insists on new requirements.
- Customer review/decision cycles for plans, prototypes, and specifications are slower than expected.
- Customer will not participate in review cycles for plans, prototypes, and specifications or is incapable of doing so: resulting in unstable requirements and time/consuming changes.
- Customer communication time (e.g., time to answer requirements-clarification questions) is slower than expected.
- Customer insists on technical decisions that lengthen the schedule.
- Customer micro-manages the development process, resulting in slower progress than planned.
- Customer-furnished components are a poor match for the product under development, resulting in extra design and integration work.
- Customer-furnished components are of poor quality, resulting in extra testing, design, and integration work and in extra customer-relationship management.
- Customer-mandated support tools and environments are incompatible, have poor performance, or have inadequate functionality, resulting in reduced productivity.
- Customer will not accept the software as delivered even though it meets all specifications.
- Customer has expectations for development speed that developers cannot meet.

Contractors
- Contractor does not deliver components when promised.
- Contractor delivers components of unacceptably low quality, and time must be added to improve quality.
- Contractor does not buy into the project and consequently does not provide the level of performance needed.

Requirements
- Requirements have been base lined but continue to change.
- Requirements are poorly defined, and further definition expands the scope of the project.
- Additional requirements are added.
- Vaguely specified areas of the product are more time-consuming than expected.

Product
- Error-prone modules require more testing, design, and implementation work than expected.
- Unacceptably low quality requires more testing, design, and implementation work to correct than expected.
- Development of the wrong software functions requires redesign and implementation.
- Development of the wrong user interface results in redesign and implementation.
- Development of extra software functions that are not required (gold-plating) extends the schedule.
- Meeting product’s size or speed constraints requires more time than expected, including time for redesign and re-implementation.
- Strict requirements for compatibility with existing system require more testing, design, and implementation than expected.
- Requirements for interfacing with other systems, other complex systems, or other systems that are not under the team’s control result in unforeseen design,

Implementation, and testing.
- Pushing the computer science state-of-the-art in one or more areas lengthens the schedule unpredictably.
- Requirement to operate under multiple operating systems takes longer to satisfy than expected.
- Operation in an unfamiliar or unproved software environment causes unforeseen problems.
- Operation in an unfamiliar or unproved hardware environment causes unforeseen problems.
- Development of a kind of component that is brand new to the organization takes longer than expected.
- Dependency on a technology that is still under development lengthens the schedule.

External environment
- Product depends on government regulations, which change unexpectedly.
- Product depends on draft technical standards, which change unexpectedly.

Personnel
- Hiring takes longer than expected.
- Task prerequisites (e.g., training, completion of other projects, acquisition of work permit) cannot be completed on time.
- Poor relationships between developers and management slow decision making and follow through.
- Team members do not buy into the project and consequently do not provide the level of performance needed.
- Low motivation and morale reduce productivity.
- Lack of needed specialization increases defects and rework.
- Personnel need extra time to learn unfamiliar software tools or environment.
- Personnel need extra time to learn unfamiliar hardware environment.
- Personnel need extra time to learn unfamiliar programming language.
- Contract personnel leave before project is complete.
- Permanent employees leave before project is complete.
- New development personnel are added late in the project, and additional training and communications overhead reduces existing team members’ effectiveness.
- Team members do not work together efficiently.
- Conflicts between team members result in poor communication, poor designs, interface errors, and extra rework.
- Problem team members are not removed from the team, damaging overall team motivation.
- The personnel most qualified to work on the project are not available for the project.
- The personnel most qualified to work on the project are available for the project but are not used for political or other reasons.
- Personnel with critical skills needed for the project cannot be found.
- Key personnel are available only part time.
- Not enough personnel are available for the project.
- People’s assignments do not match their strengths.
- Personnel work slower than expected.
- Sabotage by project management results in inefficient scheduling and ineffective planning.
- Sabotage by technical personnel results in lost work or poor quality and requires rework.

Design and implementation
- Overly simple design fails to address major issues and leads to redesign and re-implementation.
- Overly complicated design requires unnecessary and unproductive implementation overhead.
- Inappropriate design leads to redesign and re-implementation.
- Use of unfamiliar methodology results in extra training time and in rework to fix first-time misuses of the methodology.
- Product is implemented in a low level language (e.g. assembler), and productivity is lower than expected.
- Necessary functionality cannot be implemented using the selected code or class libraries; developers must switch to new libraries or custom-build the necessary functionality.
- Code or class libraries have poor quality, causing extra testing, defect correction, and rework.
- Schedule savings from productivity enhancing tools are overestimated.
- Components developed separately cannot be integrated easily, requiring redesign and rework.

Process
- Amount of paperwork results in slower progress than expected.
- Inaccurate progress tracking results in not knowing the project is behind schedule until late in the project.
- Upstream quality-assurance activities are shortchanged, resulting in time-consuming rework downstream.
- Inaccurate quality tracking results in not knowing about quality problems that affect the schedule until late in the project.
- Too little formality (lack of adherence to software policies and standards) results in mis-communications, quality problems, and rework.
- Too much formality (bureaucratic adherence to software policies and standards) results in unnecessary, time-consuming overhead.
- Management-level progress reporting takes more developer time than expected.
- Half-hearted risk management fails to detect major project risks.
- Software project risk management takes more time than expected