ABSTRACT
Notable similarities exist between software development and construction work. For example, both are craft-intensive, exhibit no consensual approach to project management, and are socially distributed. Risk is inherent to both industries. The dominant sources of risk arise from errors in requirements specification and lack of coordination within the network of project participants. There are two main reasons for this and together they have sacrificed the integrity of projects. First, relationships between the socially distributed network of groups responsible for development activities are generally adversarial and confrontational. Second, the focus for remedial action has traditionally been on optimising within task performance. This has maintained task fragmentation and separated responsible communities. In software, risk has been associated with problems of communication; in order to manage risk, strategies have been implemented which encourage co-operation among network participants. Through improved co-operation, potential areas of risk can be identified early in product development cycles. This paper examines such strategies as well as risk management approaches typically used in construction. The paper concludes that risk management practices in construction often focus on analysis of risk at the expense of identification and suggests that valuable lessons can be learned from risk management methods used in software development.
