Dependency Risks

Dependency Risks are risks you take on whenever you have a dependency on something (or someone) else.

One simple example could be that the software service you write might depend on hardware to run on: if the server goes down, the service goes down too. In turn, the server depends on electricity from a supplier, as well as a network connection from a provider. If either of these dependencies aren't met, the service is out of commission.

Dependencies can be on events, people, teams, work, processes, software, services, money and pretty much any resource, and while every project will need some of these, they also add risk to any project because the reliability of the project itself is now a function involving the reliability of the dependency.

Why Have Dependencies?

Luckily for us, the things we depend on in life are, for the most part, abundant: water to drink, air to breathe, light, heat and most of the time, food for energy.

This isn't even lucky though: life has adapted to build dependencies on things that it can rely on.

Although life exists at the bottom of the ocean around hydrothermal vents, it is a very different kind of life to ours and has a different set of dependencies given its circumstances.

This tells us a lot about Dependency Risk right here:

On the one hand, depending on something is very often helpful, and quite often essential. (For example, all life seem to depend on water).
Successful organisms adapt to the dependencies available to them (like the thermal vent creatures).
However, as soon as you have dependencies, you need to take into account their reliability. (Living near a river or stream gives you access to fresh water, for example). So, dependencies are a trade-off. They give with one hand and take with the other. Our modern lives are full of dependency (just think of the chains of dependency needed for putting a packet of biscuits on a supermarket shelf, for example), but we accept this risk because it makes life easier.
There is likely to be competition for a dependency when it is scarce (think of droughts and famine).

Types Of Dependency Risk

In order to avoid repetition, and also to break down this large topic, we're going to look break this down into some specific sub-types (shown below).