I read this book very early in my career, and I thought it would be useful to read it again as a refresher to risk management. Waltzing with Bears is a book that focuses on the identification and management of risks within the software industry. It’s filled with a number of stories answering the question, “Why should we care about risk?” as well providing a number of strategies and tools for handling risk.
Although a lot of the advice is still applicable today, I think it is true that some of the recommendations are commonplace today. They recommend, for instance, an incremental delivery approach to software (Hello agile software development!) without a specific reference to a methodology as a way of mitigating risk.
They also present the idea of estimate (un)certainty and using the idea to make better commitments to others. They also warn against default behaviour that is still rife in our industry: e.g. making a commitment to others based on an optimistic estimate hoping for a series of breaks when it is clearly high risk, which later leads on to the project death march, or a huge loss of quality.
Reading the book the second time around, I picked up a few other interesting models I don’t remember so clearly from the first time around including the use of probability profiles (a graph that shows the shape of our estimates and the uncertainties) to understand when and where to give estimated dates. There’s a useful section around risk-storming for people who have never been to a risk brainstorming session, but that wasn’t particularly new for me. Another one is the use of the Monte Carlo simulation for calculating the impact of risks. After reading that section however, I feel like I still don’t fully understand it and I would need to practice applying it for me to fully understand how that works.
Although the examples used in the book are relatively old now, there are still powerful stories about how people failed to manage risk, what they could have done instead and what the consequences were (e.g. Dallas Airport Baggage system!) I also like their practical experience shared when they talk about the cultural side of risk (e.g. how transparent or open and organisation is) and when it’s dangerous to share your view of risk. This sort of advice is often missed from books where the authors provide a very one-sided dogmatic approach without the consideration of contexts.
Overall this is an easily digestible book that introduces the idea and the importance of managing risk together with tools to help you achieve it, all set in the software industry context.
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