Visualizing and formalizing risk information: an experiment

An essential element of software engineering risk management is the conceptualization of potential risks to a project. It is the basis of risk analysis and, even more importantly, it strongly influences how risks are communicated and understood by participants in a project. We report the results of a study where different risk visualization and documentation methods were compared in a controlled experiment with students. The study indicated that a defined and sufficiently expressive visualization approach can help capture more of the risk information than less formal methods. At the same time, participants felt that the more formal approaches were not more difficult to either learn or use than less formal ones. The SEI risks statements turned out to be inferior to other methods in most comparisons.