The focus of this paper is a pilot study of IT practitioners regarding risk management practices and tools used in Australian software development projects. Our previous work [1] explained the method used for investigating whether there were differences in the practices and procedures relating to projects with 1) inter-nal customers, 2) external customers and 3) both internal and external customers. For a comprehensive view to enable understanding the method use for data analysis in this pilot study 1) we explain the approach to what we have undertaken; 2) we discuss data collection for the survey and 3) describe our data analysis from the survey. Our respondents were from software development organizations in Australia and all had previously been involved with at least one software development project. Overall, we found that 1) risk management practices were used more frequently for projects involving external customers, 2) risk manage-ment is taken more seriously when external customers are involved, 3) the people who were responsible for risk management practices had senior positions within the organization, 4) there was no difference in the type of customer for projects where simulation and predictive tools were used, 5) external customers were more satisfied with simulation and predictive tools than internal customers.