CMMI Risk Management

Question

The 'MSF for CMMI Process Improvement' process template includes both a template Word document called "RiskCategoriesandSources.dot" and a work item of type Risk.

It is my understanding, that one should determine risk sources and categories (as stated in RSKM SP 1.1) and fill the corresponding document before creating work items of type Risk.

The thing that bugs me is that there are no fields for Source or Category on the Risk work item. So, are the contents in RiskCategoriesandSources.doc used when creating work items of type Risk? How?

We've been tinkering with the possibility of customizing the process template to include fields for Source and Category on the Risk WIT, but I don't want to do that unless I really have to.

The 'official' book on CMMI doesn't help that much and I haven't been able to find 'concrete' examples of RSKM goals and practices being implemented in TFS.

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Alfred Myers | MVP Visual Developer - Visual C# | http://alfredmyers.spaces.live.com | http://twitter.com/AlfredMyers

Answer 1

I would add the Category field to the Risk WIT. In my experience, sooner or later you want to categorize your risks.

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Jesper Fernström
QWise Software engineering – refactored!

Answer 2

Thanks Jesper for your reply.

Creating a Category field is one of the alternatives we are analyzing.

Do you guys use the RiskCategoriesandSources.dot Word template that is part of the process template?

Do you guys guarantee somehow that the Category field in the Risk work item is filled exclusively with values from the Categories list in RiskCategoriesandSources.dot?

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Alfred Myers http://alfredmyersjr.wordpress.com | http://twitter.com/AlfredMyers

Answer 3

Hi Alfred, 

Thanks for your post. 

Yes, the RiskCategoriesandSources.dotx is part of the CMMI process template.

As far as I know, we can’t fill the Category field value from the Categories list(in RiskCategoriesandSources.dotx) directly. You can custom the Category field to add that Categories list(in RiskCategoriesandSources.dotx) as the default values for Category field.  

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John Qiao [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 4

Just to let you guys know that we decided to:

1. Use the taxonomy from Taxonomy-Based Risk Identification (SEI) as a basis for categorization of our risks.
2. Replicate the taxonomy's three-part structure  (class, element and atribute) in categorizing Risk workitems.
3. Put the taxonomy structure under a single node called 'Risks' in the Area field.

Why didn't we go the rout of adding an extra field?

1. We wanted a pre-populated 'list' of valid options
2. That 'list' should be editable by specified team members
3. It should hierarchical

A TreePath type field would meet all those three requirements, but unfortunately TFS does not allow for the creation of fields of this type beyond the pre-existing ones (Iteration and Area Path)

HTH

PS.: It would be really nice if TFS allowed us to add new fields of type TreePath when customizing our WITs.

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Alfred Myers http://alfredmyersjr.wordpress.com | http://twitter.com/AlfredMyers