Fuzzy FMEA Application Combined with Fuzzy Cognitive Maps to Manage the Risks of a Software Project

Abstract The failure rate of an Information Technologies (IT) software project is pretty high because of their uncertain and risky structure. Managing well this kind of projects becomes important. Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) is an extensive method that is used for identifying the importance level of risks in a project by using risk priority numbers (RPN). This method is based on experts’ experience and cognitive skills at gathering data in order to make risk assessment. This situation causes inaccurate conclusions in the final risk ranking. Fuzzy logic is widely integrated into FMEA to handle these inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the literature while making assessment and calling Fuzzy FMEA method that we proposed. In this study, we explored another uncovered weaknesses of the proposed method. FMEA and Fuzzy FMEA do not consider the relationships among the risks of a project. To overcome this disadvantage, we proposed to integrate the idea of cognitive maps into these two methods (FMEA w/FCMs and Fuzzy FMEA w/FCMs). Finally, we got a comprehensive risk assessment methodology by considering the relationships among the risks under ambiguous circumstances.