Why should you manage risks?
Every so often, we see a story in the news about an organization facing a security exploit because of lax security practices. Some businesses may respond, We don’t see a problem with our practices because we’ve always done it that way and it has never caused a problem before! This somewhat baffling mindset is a failure of risk management. It is common for inexperienced or understaffed teams to ignore risk and take the shortest path to project delivery, but as products and teams scale, the dangers of this loom greater. Strong engineering managers must manage both up and down to raise risk awareness and avoid potential disasters.
Depending on your workplace norms, managing risk is often left up to individual managers and teams. When managers fail to detect and address risks, those managers may be accountable if those risks lead to problems or disastrous outcomes. Depending on the severity of the situation, unaddressed risks can lead to substantial...
