Risk analysis in Part II

[Meeti Khare]

Hi All,

I am a bit confused about what the technical risks are in an software application.
Are these the NFRs(Performance, availability, security.......)? or something else?

Any thoughts?

Thanks in Advance
Meeti

[rohid dev]

You are right. follow Mark Cade's book.

[Bigwood Liu]

You are right, both NFR and something else.

[Meeti Khare]

Thanks Rohid,
But somehow i did not feel that Cade's book has given proper example, or may be I could not understand it.

Thanks Bigwood,
can you please elaborate on this "something else" ?

[Rishi Shehrawat]

I don't think NFR is a technical risk, your application needs to cater to NFR's. A example of technical risk could be that you are using a third party library that does not have active support or the project is not under active development. In case you run into a bug in library you will not be able to get support.

[Bigwood Liu]

Meeti Khare wrote:Thanks Rohid,
But somehow i did not feel that Cade's book has given proper example, or may be I could not understand it.

Thanks Bigwood,
can you please elaborate on this "something else" ?

For example, you are going to use a 3rd party tool, there is the risk that it might not fit into your future requirement, or it is hard to fit into your current system because of some weird protocol the tool is using. I think this is also a risk, but I don't think it might be the top 3 in you case.

NFRs need to be addressed, but many serious risks are also from NFRs.

[Anil Chowdary]

I don't think there is much to find in Mark Cade's book about risks. The below is my own understanding about technical risks

1. If an NFR is mentioned in the requirement, You design has to support it. So you can't say that it's a risk. But you can twist it little bit and project it as a risk. Lets say, if the requirement says the system will have 1000 concurrent users, then your system design should anyway support 1000 users. But if the users grow more than that, then there is a risk to it's "performance". So increase in concurrent user base could be a risk.
2. Similarly if you have some 3rd party system, You anyway have to integrate them to your system. But even after doing it, You might anticipate that the speed of the integrated system(3rd Party) might have some effect on the overall performance of your system. So reliability and speed of the integration could be a technical risk.

Just some thoughts.

-Anil