Significant Risks and Associated Contingency Plans. Table 8 – Management and Networking Activities Risk Management Risk level Risk Risk Mitigation and Contingency Plan Management Activities Risks Low Lack of experience in manag-‐ ing projects at European level The Consortium believes there are no major management risks that could jeopardize the successful development of the project at European level. Low Lack of experience in project management This risk is minimized because of the follow-‐ ing reasons: • Adequacy of the Project Management Plan • Allocation of tasks and responsibilities of partners There is a clear allocation of technical tasks and responsibilities between the partners. Risk level Risk Risk Mitigation and Contingency Plan At the beginning of the project, the project team will meet up to review the project goals and development strategy at the Kick-‐ off meeting. This will allow reaching a common understanding and prevent confu-‐ sions that would jeopardize the follow-‐up of the development of the project. Low Problems related to IP rights arise during exploitation. Set up help-‐desk to advise on IPR issues and involve Project Management Board if con-‐ flicts remain. Create clear licensing policy from the start to reduce uncertainty. Medium Deterioration of the economic situation of a partner, that impose a stop or an unac-‐ ceptable reduction of all ac-‐ tivities for that partner The corrective measures will be to distribute the activity not fulfilled to the remaining partners or to subcontract them to a third party, or a combination of the two. The two factors which are reducing this risk are: • The current consortium is well balanced and most of the activities can be taken over by the consortium in the case of a partner failure. • The consortium members have a deep knowledge of the actors in the field, and could find a replacing partner in the case of a missing competence brought by the partner failure. Low Lack of required knowledge of the project team or a key member is leaving The risk will be minimized because of the following reasons: - Selection of partners A careful election has been done in order to assign the activities and the suitable part-‐ ners for accomplishing them. - Experience and qualification of the project team The project team has been selected due to their wide relevant experience and capabili-‐ ties to successfully carry out the project ac-‐ tivities. These capabilities have been clearly demonstrated during the successful devel-‐ opment of several sim...
Significant Risks and Associated Contingency Plans. Table 9 - Service Activities Risk Management Risk level Risk Risk Mitigation and Contingency Plan Low The open-‐source distribution appears to be powerful but is not easy to use Ease-‐of-‐use will be a design requirement from the very beginning of the project. Low Trials fail to produce target improvements or perform-‐ ance. Re-‐work, check if lower targets are still worthwhile. Medium Performance of grid over cloud computation lags in comparison to plain grid computation. In any virtualization environment there is a performance hit; however it is important to take into account the full costs. Virtualiza-‐ tion is efficient because it achieves accept-‐ able performance at much better costs, not because it outperforms non-‐virtualized en-‐ vironments. StratusLab will seek to demon-‐ strate that the overall performance to cost ratio makes grids over cloud a competitive proposition. This will be achieved if the Stra-‐ tusLab virtualization layer does not place large administration tasks, makes good use of the underlying physical infrastructure, and gives users and administrators extra functionality (such as elasticity). Medium A competitor launches a simi-‐ lar product The iteration process defined in the project will allow analyzing the challenges for the next release and will allow planning new functionalities in the following version of the system. Medium New standards appear that enter into conflict or overlap with the project during the development Since our work for the extension of current standards or technologies is widely open, we will maintain contact with potential col-‐ laborators from the beginning of the project and we will synchronize our effort with them. Low Installing and maintaining the distribution is complex Usability improvement is one of the main goals of the project. Nevertheless, some level of complexity is always expected, especially when multiple technologies are combined together. In any case, the involved partners have significant experience in infrastructure operations from other projects (e.g. EGEE). The task will be assigned to highly experi-‐ enced administrators who are familiar with the management of similar systems Risk level Risk Risk Mitigation and Contingency Plan Medium The infrastructure fails to provide 24/7 services. Availability of services depends on the ma-‐ turity and stability of the software distribu-‐ tion. Both aspects will progressively im-‐ prove with the constant interaction and feedback ...
Significant Risks and Associated Contingency Plans. The table in this section presents the types of risks that may occur, the chances of occurrence and the envisioned contingency plans. It is felt that the level of risk foreseen is in line with the dimensions and objectives of moderate size project, and that the composition of the consortium and the management structure pro-‐ vide the required flexibility to handle the risks herein reported Table 10 - Research Activities Risk Management Risk level Risk Risk Mitigation and Contingency Plan Low Research does not reach the expected results. The project will explore new algorithms and technologies. Though the project results may not be as convincing as expected, they will provide a significant step forward in the state-‐of-‐the-‐art. Low Competitors reach some ex-‐ pected results in advance. The continuous monitoring and well-‐proved consortium expertise in the field make this risk very unlikely. Anyway, competitor's re-‐ sults would be employed to give a step for-‐ xxxx, re-‐planning the objectives and push-‐ ing the project well beyond the state of the art. Low Disagreement in the most im-‐ portant scientific objectives. The process of state of the art analysis and requirements extraction make the risks of disagreement very low once the project has started. Should this happen, the appropriate management mechanisms will be defined to reach a fast consensus that prevents ham-‐ pering the project's progress. Medium Research results do not reach the expected results (top quality journals or contribu-‐ tion to successful standards). Although the risk level is medium, the pro-‐ xxxxx beyond the state of the art and the use-‐ fulness of the project results are still guaran-‐ xxxx. The feedback obtained from these world-‐class journals and standardisation bodies will be employed to further improve the research objectives and methodology.
Significant Risks and Associated Contingency Plans. There are no risks for citizens or society associated with the ENVISAGE project. In order to systematically avoid and mitigate internal risks to the successful achievement of the project’s goals, a specific risk management process will be part of the project management. The goal of the risk management process is to cost-efficiently eliminate negative influences on the project outcomes. Therefore, risks should be recognized as early as possible, ideally before the situation which impacts the project results occur. The risk management will focus on risks which are likely to have significant negative influences. The risk management process includes identification, mitigation and action plans to reduce risk. It will be composed of the following steps:
Significant Risks and Associated Contingency Plans. A comprehensive state-of-the-art Risk Assessment and Management Plan will be implemented within the first six months of the project and will address different kinds of risk (external, internal, strategic, operational, other). In more detail, since the PHEME project mainly deals with software development, carried out by several partners, it is exposed to risks in the following key areas: • Technology and Standards (building on the most promising technology, using and providing necessary standards) – PHEME partners are involved in the relevant standardisation bodies and are at the leading edge of technology in their areas. • People – PHEME has world-leading partners in all areas of expertise needed in the project. Many of them also have an established history of previous collaborations. Finally, the consortium contains the right skill set covering the complete chain of technology providers, integrators, and end-users, to guarantee success. • Organisational – the management structure of the project has been designed carefully to be appropriate for the size of the consortium and the type of the project. The coordinator together with the EC will monitor how management functions and changes can be made swiftly.
