Providing for continuous risk management in distributed software projects

The paper presents a concept of continuous risk management in distributed software development projects. ne concept is particularly relevant for critical software applications where risk management is among main project management activities. Our approach recognises that effective and open communication is the prerequisite for successful risk management. Therefore, it concentrates on providing to the project stakeholders a broad and highly available communication channel through which they can communicate risk-related information. The channel has unlimited memory - it registers all incoming information much as the "black box" device memorises all relevant data during an aircraft flight. The collected information can then be analysed from different angles to select and prioritise the most important risks or to analyse the project history in order to find out how risk perception developed during the project course. The description of a tool that embodies those concepts and reports from some validation experiments are also included.