Whether or not you think your project is plagued with problems, you might need effective risk management to keep you out of trouble. Risk management is similar to performing preventive health care and buying insurance for your project. It involves indetifying potential problems (risks), analyzing those risks, planning to manage them, and reviewing them.

This paper describes one of HP Division's experiences in starting an initiative that significantly changed the way in which its managers, engineers, and marketing specialists understand and implement product requirements management.

The experiences detail how, by maturing our requirements management practices, our organization was able to address the following issues: 1) information redundancy and synchronization, 2) inconsistent documentation format and content, 3) inefficient requirements elicitation, communication, and review procedures, and 4) lack of customer focus. The paper also offers recommendations for those organizations that plan to start a similar initiative. Finally, it discusses plans to improve our requirements practices on future projects.

This paper describes a case study of the Rockwell Collins approach to repository automation, specific examples of tools implemented, and benefits realized through automation.

Most project managers want to reduce risk during a project. One way to reduce overall risk is to define and focus the project goals up front, and continually verify those goals and progress toward those goals during the project.