ATTENTION SHAPING AND SOFTWARE RISK - A CATEGORICAL ANALYSIS OF 4 CLASSICAL RISK MANAGEMENT APPROACHES

This paper examines software risk management in a novel way, emphasizi ng the ways in which managers address software risks through sequentia l attention shaping and intervention. Software risks are interpreted a s incongruent states within a socio-technical model of organizational change that includes task, structure, technology, and actors. Such inc ongruence can lead to failures in developing or implementing the syste m and thus to major losses. Based on this model we synthesize a set of software risk factors and risk resolution techniques, which cover the socio-technical components and their interactions. We use the model t o analyze how four classical risk management approaches-McFarlan's por tfolio approach, Davis' contingency approach, Boehm's software risk ap proach, and Alter's and Ginzberg's implementation approach-shape manag erial attention. This analysis shows that the four approaches differ s ignificantly in their view of the manager's role and possible actions. We advise managers to be aware of the limitations of each approach an d to combine them to orchestrate comprehensive risk management practic es in a context. Overall, the paper provides a new interpretation of s oftware risk management which goes beyond a narrow system rationalism by suggesting a contingent, contextual, and multivariate view of softw are development.