Summary

Risk management is a valuable skill and field to be aware of as a leader. Borrowing techniques from risk management can help engineering managers be successful and avoid disastrous outcomes.

Here are some key takeaways from this chapter:

• Managing risk is an approach and practice to avoid potential disaster scenarios.
• Managing risk helps you to assess and communicate what disaster scenarios may arise in your organization and why they should or should not be addressed.
• The steps to managing risks include identifying, prioritizing, communicating, and responding:
  • To identify risks, follow these guidelines:
    • Familiarize yourself with common software engineering risks
    • Look to the various sources of risks: physical, social, political, operational, economic, legal, cognitive
    • Employ automated and manual checks on your team’s work
    • Use the pre-mortem brainstorming exercise
    • Implement chaos engineering
  • To prioritize risks, follow these guidelines:
    • Determine the right level...