Streamlining Product Lifecycle Risk Management Through an OPM-Based Risk Modeling Framework

Risk Management is common to projects and operations, the two major phases in the product's lifecycle, but is practiced independently and almost disconnectedly in these two domains. Unfortunately, current risk management methodologies hardly address the problem of risk transition from projects to operations, during the product's transition from the former phase to the latter, or vice versa. Project risk management is mostly concerned with risk reduction between project phases, e.g., design and development, while operational risk management usually assumes a given operational state, and ignores project risk effects. The problem worsens when project stakeholders have little motivation, and often some reluctance, to provide their operational counterparts with project risk information. In these cases, product beneficiaries are forced to spend significant time and resources, and to experience critical faults, in order to rediscover root problems and adverse effects that product engineers are usually aware of. Stakeholders on both sides have begun to acknowledge the transition of risks from the project phase in the product's lifecycle to the operational phase. Consequnetly, they are starting to collaborate in the streamlining and mitigation of these risks. We present a new overarching Lifecycle Risk Management framework, which consists of a structured risk modeling method, based on Object-Process Methodology (OPM), a structured conceptual modeling framework with a bimodal textual and visual representation. The new framework provides the means to model, analyze, mitigate, and manage risk migration between lifecycle phases.