With the continued trend of reduced funding, government procurement offices haveinitiated acquisition approaches that include rapidly changing requirements, shorterdelivery cycles, and less oversight. These new methods of doing business emphasize theneed for programs to implement sustainable risk management processes that can help themdetermine where to allocate their scarce resources.
In 1995, the Air Force Electronic Systems Center (ESC) originally developed the RiskMatrix process, a structured way to identify, prioritize, evaluate, and manage the impactof key risks on programs. To facilitate the implementation of this process, the MITRECorporation developed a software application that retains all the features andcapabilities of the original Risk Matrix and adds analytical features— prioritizingrisk events based on the Borda voting method, tracking risk mitigation progress, andsupplying a variety of sorting and charting capabilities. The application was built inExcel 5.0 and is compatible on Macintosh and PC platforms.
In 1997, ESC created the Acquisition Development Office (ADO), a multidisciplinaryorganization dedicated to helping programs develop acquisition strategies, conduct sourceselections, and award contracts. Teaching programs how to be successful in managing risksis an important part of these efforts. To meet the needs of the ADO, the MITRE Corporationused its experiences in risk management to modify the original Risk Matrix and create asimple, easy to use, facilitated process for establishing a baseline risk assessment thatis sustainable.
This tutorial describes this baseline risk assessment process and uses the Risk Matrixtool to support it. The basic principles can be used by anyone who needs to manage risks.
Intended Audience: Anyone interested in learning about a riskassessment process that is sustainable across a program’s life cycle can benefit fromthis tutorial.
Class Size: Limited to 12 participants.
Instructor:Anne Marie Willhite is a Lead Systems Engineer at theMITRE Corporation. She has 14 years experience in systems and acquisition engineering onlarge software intensive command and control systems. She was part of the team thatdeveloped the original Risk Matrix process in support of Air Force’s ElectronicSystems Center’s (ESC) Acquisition Reengineering effort. She has been working withthe Software Engineering Institute (SEI) on the development of a team risk managementprocess for ESC using collaborative inter-organizational integrated process teams.
Anne Marie is currently assigned to the Chief Architect’s Office (CAO) where sheis leading a team to identify and resolve implementation issues associated witharchitecture and acquisition reform initiatives such as the Joint Technical Architecture,Defense Information Infrastructure Common Operating Environment, Simulation BasedAcquisition. Before joining the CAO, she spent five years in MITRE’s SystemsEngineering Process Office where she focused on systems and software engineering processesand capability maturity, with an emphasis on requirements definition and analysis and riskmanagement practices and tools. She holds a M.S. in Computer Science from Steven’sInstitute of Technology, a B.A. in Mathematics and Physics from Manhattanville College,and is currently pursuing an MBA at Clark University.
An Exercise in Establishing a Risk Baseline with Risk Matrix
Thoughts on Sustaining the Process