TRITONTM RISK MANAGEMENT PLAN
TEAM ORANGE
Orange Team
December 10, 2007
The purpose of this document is to provide a plan to identify and manage
risks. Risk management is an important part of project management and is one
of the nine knowledge areas.
Risk Management Plan
To manage risks, we will use the following procedure:
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Identify the risk
Identify the phase that the risk is in
Enter the risk into our team’s online risk management plan
Determine the risk’s probability of occurring and the severity to the project
if the risk occurs
Enter the risk probability and severity
Determine a strategy for managing the risk from the Risk Management
Strategy section
Mitigate or otherwise deal with the risk
Track the risk
We will deal with the risks by using the most appropriate risk management
strategy. These strategies are:
1) Acceptance – If this strategy is chosen, we simple simply accept the
consequence of a risk if it does occur. This strategy will be chosen if the
cost to deal with the risk is greater than the cost of the risk occurring. This
will also be the default strategy for any risk that occurs that we have not
identified.
2) Avoidance – If this strategy is chosen, we will take steps to avoid the risk
what-so-ever. So if there is a risk with a chosen OS, then we may decide
just switch to an OS that doesn’t have that risk characteristic.
3) Transference – If this strategy is chosen, we will transfer the risk to a third
party. This is the strategy that we have chosen for designing the main
board of our prototype.
4) Mitigation – If this strategy is chosen, we will take steps to decrease
either the severity of the risk and/ or the probability that the risk will occur.
We can accomplish this by making contingency plans.
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Orange Team
December 10, 2007
A) Hardware and Software Interoperability:
This is the biggest risk our project faces. The real hard part about our
project will be to get the hardware (sensors and sensor stations) work
together with the software. And while this has a medium probability of
occurring this could have a devastating impact on our project. If we cannot
get the hardware and the software to work together then we will not be able to
create our system at all. This will inevitably cost more money and more time
in order to get a working product that is different than our original plans, so we
need to mitigate this risk as soon as possible.
Mitigation:
In order to mitigate this risk we need to have a very specific and in
depth testing strategy. We need to make sure that our hardware is connecting
with the software at the very lowest levels and that as we start to piece
together all of our different modules that everything continues to work (In
depth module and Integration testing)
B) Legal Liability:
Obviously since the goal of our system is to help save lives, if it fails in
any way and somebody dies or is injured we will invariably have someone try
to sue us. While this is not something we can specifically prevent from
happening (since lawsuits are getting more and more common and frivolous)
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Orange Team
December 10, 2007
we can mitigate the effects. Since we think this will have a medium
probability, we need to be prepared so that we don’t get put out of business.
Mitigation:
The first thing we need to do is hire a lawyer to help us avoid legal
liabilities we do not want. Since our primary customer will be theme parks,
they will already be well protected and they will have policies in place to
prevent them from being sued. We need to have similar policies and make
sure that the terms of use of our product clearly state that our product in no
way guarantees that people will not drown so that we can not get sued.
C) Hardware Availability:
Another big problem is hardware availability. If we cannot get the
hardware for our system then we obviously make the system in its entirety.
The most difficult hardware to acquire will be the sensors. Since we are
looking at relatively new RuBee technology we may not be able to purchase it
as we would like. While we feel that this has a medium probability, we also
think that this will have a lower impact compared to the other risks, because
we still have other alternatives as far as sensor technology is concerned.
Mitigation:
We have been talking to Visible Assets the makers of RuBee
technology to ensure that they will help us with this project. They have
expressed interest in our project idea, and they are willing to work with us.
Working with the hardware manufacturer is the first step we will take towards
making sure that the hardware is available to us, but in case we can not use
RuBee sensors we will continue to investigate other sensor technology to find
something else suitable.
D) Unit Malfunction:
Another risk of failure in our project is unit malfunction. What would
happen if a wristband stopped working? Or is a sensor station stopped
working? Our system would not work. And when Triton will not be able to
function properly then it can’t save lives. We think this will have a low
probability since we will be using reliable hardware (in a difficult environment
though) but it would have a high impact if somebody happened to die or get
injured because our system was down.
Mitigation:
The first thing we will do to mitigate unit failure is implement a
diagnostic testing algorithm of the wrist band during the registration phase.
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Orange Team
December 10, 2007
We will also have the wristband send out a “keep alive” signal when they are
in use so that the triton system can determine if a wristband stops responding
without being deactivated, Also we will need to make sure our software can
adequately inform the lifeguards of the malfunction (whether it is a wristband
or a station) so that they can relay the information along to management, and
also be aware that the system is faulty.
E) False Positives:
Another major risk of our project is that our system will have too many
false positives and then make our system ineffective. If lifeguards just deal
with false positives all day long, then they will grow complacent and possibly
ignore a real drowning incident. We think that there is a medium probability of
this happening, but that the impact will be generally low compared to the
other risks.
Mitigation:
To avoid having too many false positives we will need to tune the
sensitivity of our system. Proper system tuning will be determined during
alpha and beta testing so that we have the fewest number of false positives,
while not missing an actual incident of drowning.
F) Market Competition:
The last risk we face is market competition. The last thing we would
want to product that costs less. We think that this will have a low probability
but it will have a medium impact.
Mitigation:
To mitigate this risk, we have researched our competitors thoroughly
and we have determined that there is nothing like our product that’s uses
sensor technology. Because of this we have been able to distinguish
ourselves from our competitors because we offer the same solution at half the
price.
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