Riskin’: Software Risk Management as an Environmental Change Process for Providing Leadership Opportunities

Developing and maintaining software is an extremely risky process. The success of the project demands effective management of the risks. Traditional theory of software risk management just includes the risks from the perspective of general project management, avoiding project environmental changes. Unlike traditional risk management theory, issues during a software development project are actually “change management” challenges. Successful change management requires leadership and effective teams. Any change could be either a potential crisis or a great opportunity, so leaders can make decisions for translating changes into opportunities. Risk management teaching strategies related to software projects leave aside the development of managerial and leadership skills. In addition, effective team characteristics affecting the project performance are avoided. In this paper, we propose Riskin’, a game-based approach for teaching the importance of leadership decisions and effective team characteristics in change management process, and, therefore, risk management process. This game practice leads to a novel way to understand risks as leadership opportunities to develop effective teams.