By Stijn Follet
On 12 May 2014, the Agile Consortium Belgium has brought Alan Moran, one of the world authorities on Agile management practices to Belgium. Alan held a strong talk on Agile Risk Management. He sees himself as a researcher in the field, and recently published a book on the subject.
In his presentation, he first defined and delimited Agile Risk Management (“Risk is uncertainty that matters”), and then dove into the strategies to deal with risk in an Agile environment. Risk has negative connotations, but can also yield opportunities. Since Agile embraces change, and any change includes risks, it is important to measure the risk impact versus the probability that it actually happens. One should also strive for a healthy balance between – and monitoring of – the advantages that change bring versus the risks that it entails. One other strong element that he emphasized is that teams are responsible for identifying and following the risks of the project that they are in, even if it is a risk that they cannot manage themselves. They should take care of them, because they can have an impact on their project and thus on their success. The slides of the presentation can be found here.
The event had a strong show-up of +-50 people, and so it truly was a networking event with many middle management attendants. The Agile Consortium Belgium, with a renewed board and mission statement, has made a strong start with this first inner circle.