An AHP grading approach for risks in the process of software development in SMEs

The concept of risk management is habitually left unnoticed in agile software organizations, thus negatively af-fecting the project and disappointing the customer. Thus, it is mandatory to discern and rank the risks for mitigation. With this motive, this contribution has applied the Analytic Hierarchy Process decision-making technique in order to grade a list of 16 software risks discerned at the time of the risk management experiments in software enterprises. Amidst the 16 unique risks classified into distinct 'risk nature' categories entitled 'difficulties', 'changes', 'mistakes', and 'challenges', it is found that the 'challenges' is the most important one to be treated first, trailed by the 'difficulties', 'mistakes', and 'changes' categories. As per the outcome, it is acknowledged that 'right way of budget utilization', 'difficult assignments', and 'convincing clients with other alternatives' can be considered as the ultimate risks. In addition, the attempt provides a comprehension of the potential threats under the software domain and their estimated magnitude.