The Two Faces of Uncertainty: Threat vs Opportunity Management in Agile Software Development

Abstract

Uncertainty is an inevitable fact of software development that can determine success or failure of entire projects. Although often associated with risk or threat, uncertainty bears much overlooked qualities regarding market opportunities. Adopting a conceptualization of uncertainty that includes both threat and opportunity, we investigate different possibilities to manage the uncertainties preceding the creation of novel ideas and innovation. In this qualitative study, we empirically explore the concept of uncertainty beyond the focus on requirement uncertainty that prevails in the literature and explicitly emphasize its multidimensionality. We argue that the failure to distinguish between different dimensions of uncertainty can lead to their inadequate management at high cost. Our results show how teams exploit practices to manage different uncertainties in order to mitigate threats while remaining open to opportunities. We discuss the implications of our findings for product development teams as well as for the design of supportive organizational structures.