All agile projects have some degree of risk involved. The threat could have a high to low impact on the project. The risk could be positive or negative, helpful or harmful, and internal or external. How you plan for threats in your projects determines what will happen should a risk arise that needs to be prevented, mitigated, or dealt with.

Similar to Waterfall projects, in Agile projects, risks need to be identified and managed. Below discusses common risks that arise in Agile projects and how they can be dealt with.

Regarding features in agile projects, it is straightforward to get scope creep. If requirements are not adequately defined from the start, when features are being built, there’s a good chance new additions that were not agreed upon will slip into the mix.

Here’s how to prevent that from happening:

Examples of specific issues in Agile Projects that affect the project’s scope:

Another critical aspect of a project is the timeline that is set for it. This timeline can be determined based on the available resources to do the work and the effort it will take to meet the project’s requirements. Like any schedule planning, things can go awry that may delay the progress of a project causing it to finish late or sooner than planned. However, we will focus on the more undesirable outcome of the project being late and suggest these ways to prevent that from happening.

Timeline Planning

When planning a timeline, give yourself padding for errors. That means:

Agile-Specific Timeline Considerations

Examples of specific issues in Agile that affect the project schedule are:

It is always better to have prevention, mitigation, and action plans in place.

Most importantly, always communicate to the client when you know you must catch up on deliverables.

Very tight timelines give almost no margin for error. At the same time, we would like to run a project 100% smoothly with no interruptions. We must plan for the worst but aim for the best outcome possible.

Suppose the actual effort to do the work is accurately determined. This can be used to estimate the budget based on hours and resources. Quality and value are other factors that can be considered for a budget estimate. Creating the budget and tracking the cost throughout the project’s progress is essential.

On occasions where an agile project may be running over budget may indicate that there was scope creep, poor planning, lousy development, or other factors that resulted in an increase in cost over what was initially estimated. Being too far under budget may also indicate that things were missing from the project that should have been done or the customer was overcharged.

A balance needs to be walked when dealing with a project budget. At the same time, you do need a reserve for unknown issues that may come up. You also need to keep track of and account for everything.

When planning your budget, take into account these risks and how to prevent them:

Budget Planning

Many factors that can affect a budget come back, ensuring a proper project scope is defined. This is the first step in determining whether an accurate budget can be implemented with few gray areas.

Once you can identify risks in your project and put plans together for them, you will be better positioned to handle them to ensure a higher probability of project success.