How do you manage risks?

Managing risk is a continuous process. Once you develop an awareness of risk, it is something that you will manage every day. Since risks can be so impactful to businesses and teams, it is good to take a rigorous approach to managing them. Take control of risks by identifying them, prioritizing, communicating, and responding.

Identifying risks

Identifying risks, or risk recognition, is the most important step of risk management. Even if you were to stop here, the act of recognizing a threat removes the surprise from it and allows you to have it in mind as you go about your work.

Risks that you identify may not always make sense to further manage. Some risks, such as natural disasters or global events, you may take note of as threats but are not necessarily worth specific mitigation. At this stage, you focus on recognizing and cataloging only, starting with common risks in software engineering.

Examples of common risks

In Chapter 5, we learned...