Advancing Risk and Value Management Practices for Processes and Products

• Main Author: Pasi Ojala
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: International Institute of Informatics and Cybernetics 2008-12-01
• Series: Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics
• Subjects: Risk Management; Cost; Value Engineering; Software Product And Process Improvement; Value And Worth
• Online Access: http://www.iiisci.org/Journal/CV$/sci/pdfs/QS302SS.pdf

During the last decades software has become an important part of our everyday life in the form of various information processing intensive products and services. The competition between software companies has risen considerably and at the same time the importance of cost efficient and value creating software development has been recognized in many companies. Value Engineering has been a usable to method for developing high value products for several years. Earlier it has been applied successfully to software process as well as to software product development. Normally the development of high value products contains also several risks. Combination of efficient value management practices and risk management is one possibility to try to avoid the most dangerous risks to realize for planned value. This research combines Value Engineering and risk management practices into a usable new method in order to better respond to the challenges that risks might cause to the value of software products and their development. This is done in part by defining the concepts of value, worth and cost and in part by defining the Value Engineering process with necessary risk management practices. Three practical industrial cases show that proposed two-dimensional method works in practise and is useful to assessed companies.