Five core risk areas common to all projects
Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister identified five core risk areas common to all projects in their book, Waltzing with Bears : Intrinsic Schedule Flaw (estimates that are wrong and undoable from day one, often based on wishful thinking) Specification Breakdown (failure to achieve stakeholder consensus on what to build) Scope Creep (additional requirements that inflate the initially accepted set) Personnel Loss Productivity Variation (difference between assumed and actual performance)