There are four major
sources of risk:
1. The
product;
in that it may not work properly with the result that some loss occurs to the
developers (see section 3.1.3 for more on this).
2. The
project;
in that it may be late with the developers incurring some penalty clause, or reduced
probability of gaining some later contract, exposed to some danger due to an external dependency
on a supplier, greatly exceeding its cost envelope, lack of skills, or other resources.
3. The
users;
in that they may use the product
???wrongly,???
in a way that was not allowed for and
which, while no blame need be associated with the developers, might prejudice the probability of
the developers winning similar contracts in future.
4. The
environment;
which includes competitors, the government, the banks, the weather, etc.
Terminal Litigation
here was once an Italian computer manufacturer whose British subsidiary sold an expensive
system to a large solicitors??™ practice. It was a client-server system and buried in the
contract was a phrase to the effect that the system would support up to 160 clients. The
contract was signed and much spumante
1
flowed. No one at the manufacturer??™s end had read the
details of the contract, much less understood it. No one had ever tested such a system with more
than 5 clients and no one had informed the Head of Quality Control of the contract??™s existence,
much less of its provisions.
This was an interesting experience for the Italian computer manufacturer whose litigation
experience had hitherto been confined mostly to the Italian legal system.
Pages:
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137