Technical Risk Assessment Handbook - Defence Science and ...

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• Is the source of the risk due to technology immaturity or system integration
immaturity
• Is there uncertainty
• What further research or development is needed to mature the technology
of the sub-system or the integration of the system
• Can the risk be treated primarily through programmatic means, eg changes
to the work breakdown, tasks/activities and schedule logic If so it is
unlikely to be a technical risk.
5.31 Dealing with unknowns. Assessing technical risks is inherently about dealing
with uncertainty. However, in some cases there may be no knowledge at all of a subsystem,
making it difficult to undertake an assessment. For example, the project may
not have made a selection of the electronic warfare (EW) system for a platform and
the risk is that the EW system will not be integrated into the combat system in time.
While the draft TRA is being developed, these potential risk events can be described
as unknown in order to flag that risk treatment is required, namely to obtain the
necessary information to enable a complete assessment to be conducted. For the
endorsed TRA and particularly for the Second Pass TRA, it is desirable to provide a
more useful assessment than unknown.
5.32 There are two practical approaches to handling a shortfall of information:
• Either assume that the risk event is more than likely to occur, and then
assess the impact and hence the risk. Thus risk events which have major
or moderate impact on project outcomes will be assessed as high risk,
while risk events that have minor impact can be assessed as medium. This
is a worst-case assessment.
• Or consider the range of possible options and assess whether the risks are
different across the range. So in the example of an EW system for a
platform, it might be possible to assess for those EW systems that have
already been integrated into the combat system that the technical risk is
low, while for those other options which have not already been integrated
into the combat system the risk might be high.
Step 5 - Determining overall risk level
5.33 The risk profile can be summarised using either the format at Table 7 or at
Table 8. The Tables include the overall technical risk level as defined in paragraph
3.29.
Technical Risk Assessment Handbook Version 1.1