Advanced
Project Management Software
with Risk Register and Monte Carlo Analysis
Project managers can use
RiskyProject for planning, scheduling, quantitative risk
analysis, and performance measurement of projects with multiple risks and uncertainties.
RiskyProject
allows managers to improve their ability to predict the course of
projects and determine how risks and uncertainties will affect the
project schedule. With RiskyProject, you can optimize the course of
your project: track project performance and risk together and analyze
the affect of your mitigation efforts. It will help increase the
chance that your project will be on time and on budget.
Integration with Microsoft®
Project and Primavera®
RiskyProject
is built around its own scheduling system. You can define task
parameters, relationships between them, constraints, resources,
and cost without using Microsoft® Project, Primavera, or any
other scheduling software.
However,
if you are already a user of Project, Primavera, or other
project management software, you can seamlessly open project,
created by these applications and augment existing data by
assigning uncertainties to your tasks and projects.
A risk register is a set of all risks and issues in the project. Issues are risks that have occurred and therefore are having an actual affect on your project. You can easily convert risks to issues. You can open and close risks. Risks in the risk register may have different
properties (owner, recorder, contact, date recorded, date converted to
issue, location, etc.). You may customize any properties for all projects.
Risks and issue can be assigned to different tasks and resources or be global. For example, you could assign the risk “Budgetary problem” to all tasks that this risk could affect. Each risk assignment will have different probabilities and outcomes. For example, “Budgetary problems” assigned to task “Project elaboration” will have chance of occurrence 30% and outcome “Restart task”.
After
calculation, the risk register will present calculated risk impact, risk probability and risk score, which is equal probability multiplied on impact. The risk register also
may show probability, calculated impact and score of the risk after mitigation.
The risk register can be exported and used for other projects.
In
addition to the risk register, uncertainties in the RiskyProject
can be represented using statistical distributions.
RiskyProject
performs quantitative risk analysis on any types of risks outcomes including non-schedule risks. Non-schedule risk
categories include quality, safety, performance, etc. You may
add or replace any risk categories.
You can now rank risks of all types based on scores. Risks affecting quality, safety, technology, project duration, cost, and others can be ranked together. In addition, for non-schedule risks (quality, safety, etc.), you do not necessarily need a project schedule to perform analysis.
Setting
up your project for risk analysis has never been easier.
RiskyProject’s interface is designed to allow you to quickly
add and edit your project risks. To assign risk to tasks you may
use risk register, global and local risk views, assign them
separately for each task or resource.
RiskyProject allows you to define
default settings for task, resource and risk parameters and when
you need help an interactive system of legends and on-screen
help messages will guide you though the process of modeling your
project schedule.
The
results of your project risk analysis are shown on the Results
Gantt chart. You will see the ranges for start and finish times
of each task, and be able to compare them with baseline or
original project schedule.
The
RiskyProject scheduling engine is designed and optimized for
risk analysis. Probabilistic calculations with multiple
simulations are performed quickly: on small projects, the
calculations are instantaneous. This is important, for as new
information about the project performance becomes available, you
can quickly reanalyze the project as often as required.
Risks and issues can be shown on the Gantt chart as arrows. The calculated impact of a risk is color-coded. For threats green = low, yellow = medium, and red = high. For opportunities, colors are opposite. The size of the arrow represents the risk probability. Click on an arrow to view information about the particular risk.
The risk matrix shows project risks’ impact and probabilities and allows you to identify critical risks. In addition, the Risk matrix shows both threats and opportunities. The Risk Matrix is fully customizable: you can define the size of the matrix and risk
tolerance.
RiskyProject performs earned value analysis based on original
project schedule and project schedule with risks and uncertainties (results of analysis). RiskyProject allows you to specify or calculate actual cost for each task. Actual cost, budgeted cost, and cost as a result of analysis (with risks and uncertainties) are displayed using interactive cash flow diagrams. You can determine difference between actual and budgeted cost on the each stage of the project.
You can also view a project cash flow. The Cash flow analysis view shows monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, and yearly cost and income allocation. You can also apply Net Present Value (NPV) discount rates and internal rate of return (IRR). The Cash flow view includes cost and income data in both table and chart format for the current schedule, results of analysis, and
actuals.
In addition to cost analysis RiskyProject includes income and
revenue analysis with risks and uncertainties. You may perform
risk analysis related to both product development and product
sales. RiskyProject has separate sets of risks related to
income, such as Fixed Income Increase and Relative Income
Increase.
Just double-click on each bar within
the Gantt chart to view histograms for duration, start and
finish times, and cost, associated with the particular task. See
Online
Documentation for more information
Because
real-life data is sometimes the only way to assess your
uncertainties correctly, tracking is one of the most important
components of RiskyProject. To track a task, you enter the
percentage of the task done on the particular date. RiskyProject
then calculates the projected task duration and updates the risk
profile of the task. The project schedule is recalculated to
give you a more accurate estimate of total cost, project finish
time, and duration. These new results are then presented in the
Tracking Gantt Chart.
RiskyProject allows
you setup project deadlines for tasks and projects and assign
different actions to them. For example, tasks or projects can be
canceled if the task or the project reaches the deadline. In
this case, the success rate of the project or task (chance the
project or task will be completed) is reduced.
See Online
Documentation for more information.
You can now model weather and other calendar related event’s using probabilistic calendars. If your project has a 30% chance of running an inclement weather schedule, you can create this calendar with reduced hours of operation and run it 30% of the time during the project to model this calendar risk.
In addition, RiskyProject 3 now has calendars that are associated with particular resources and tasks.
Sensitivity Analysis
(Tornado Diagram)
Sensitivity
Analysis shows you the input parameters (task duration, start
and finish time, success rate, etc.) that have the most affect
on project parameters (total project cost, total duration,
project finish time, and success rate). Sensitivity analysis
allows you to identify critical risks, which have the potential
of significantly affecting your project. These critical risks
should be the key focus of your risk mitigation efforts. The
results of sensitivity analysis are presented in sensitivity
charts.
Crucial
Tasks are those tasks, according to the sensitivity analysis,
whose duration has the most affect on a project’s duration and
finish time are crucial tasks. Uncertainties related to
critical tasks should be assessed and the risks associated with
these tasks should be mitigated. Crucial tasks are displayed on
the Gantt chart using distinct colors.
Risks and deadlines can affect task success rates. You can quickly identify tasks with that fall within
specific success rates by assigning different colors to ranges
of success rates. For example, those tasks whose success rate
falls between 0 and 10% could be assigned the red color.
The Project Summary view shows the main information about project: total cost or revenue (if income is defined), finish time, duration, and success rate for both deterministic and probabilistic calculations.
Project Dashboard 3x3 is an easy way to view results of
analysis: three main project parameters (cost, duration, finish
time) with and without risk; three most crucial tasks, three
most critical risks. Total project cost, duration, and finish
time with risks are presented based on mean values. Crucial
tasks and critical risks are presented as a result of
sensitivity analysis. See Online
Documentation for more information.
RiskyProject comes
with powerful reporting tools. You can output the project
schedule from each step of the workflow. RiskyProject’s
customizable Task Sheet and Result Task Sheet allow you to see
task information in table format. The results can be printed,
exported to the clipboard in graphic and text format, or
exported to as a JPEG file. This is particularly useful if you
want to publish results of your analysis to the web.
Risk Templates
Risk templates are
standard sets of risks that allow you to quickly and simplify
add risks to tasks and projects. A number of templates are
included to RiskyProject package. In addition, it is easy to
create your own templates, which you can use for your own
projects.
See Online
Documentation for more information.
Managing Mitigations Using
Multiples Baselines
RiskyProject now supports multiple baselines. You can save the current schedule or the calculated results as a baseline. A baseline is a deterministic project schedule, which you can use to:
• Track project performance against the baseline
• Analyze different project scenarios
• Perform mitigation analysis. For example, if you want to understand effect of mitigation efforts for a group of risks on project cost. To compare pre and post mitigation schedules, you perform an analysis without mitigation efforts and save the results as a baseline. Next, apply mitigation efforts, this can require additional tasks and costs and reduces the probability or impact of the risk in the current schedule. Calculate the post-mitigation schedule analysis and create another baseline with these results. Finally, perform a cost comparison between the pre and post mitigation baselines.
You can define mitigation plans using
the Mitigation view. Mitigation plan can be execute when risk is
occurred. RiskyProject will count, how many times the mitigation
plan is executed. The diagram, which shows how often the
mitigation plan is executed, will be displayed within a
mitigation view. One mitigation plan will be executed only once
per task even multiple risks occur. See Online
Documentation for more information.
Risk Chart
Risk chart shows
risks associated with tasks versus task duration or task cost.
The risk is expressed as task standard deviation of task
duration or cost, maximum, minimum values, ranges, or different
percentiles (P10, P90, etc.). In a well-balanced project
schedules, different tasks usually have similar level of risks.
However, if the risk associated with a task is higher than for
other tasks with similar duration or cost, these risks should be
carefully analyzed and possibly mitigated. Alternatively, if a
task does not have significant risks and uncertainties compared
with other similar tasks, it may make sense to analyzethe task uncertainties to see if they have been
represented properly.
See Online
Documentation for more information.
Probabilistic
branching allows the project to branch from one task to another
task or group of tasks as part of the simulation process. For
example, depending on results of project elaboration, there is a
40% chance that one project alternative will be selected and a
60% chance that another project alternative will be selected
Conditional
branching allows the project to branch from one task to another
task based on certain conditions. For example, if a feature
development task takes longer than 2 weeks, this may be require
shorter development time for other features. Conditions related to
task duration, finish time, and cost can be specified for each
task that has successors. RiskyProject checks these if then
conditions during simulations.
Different
risks can coincide with each other. For example, bad weather
conditions correlates with the delayed delivery of the goods. For
each risk you can specify correlated risks or risks that may occur
with a specific risk.
See Online
Documentation for more information.
Optimistic and Pessimistic Project Schedule
Optimistic (low) and pessimistic (high) project schedule can be displayed separately on Result Gantt chart. It gives you an opportunity to analyze different project scenarios.
In addition to the Risk Register uncertainties in the RiskyProject can be represented using
statistical distributions. Using RiskyProject’s intuitive
interface, you can define ranges for the following task
parameters: duration, start time, cost, and lag between task
successor and predecessor.
RiskyProject supports
the following distributions for task duration, start time, and
cost:
If you have empirical data related to cost, income, or duration, you can use it to generate a statistical distribution and use it in the analysis. RiskyProject uses Stat:Fit from Geer Mountain Software to generate statistical distributions.
See Online
Documentation for more information.
RiskyProject professional features advanced risk analysis
functionalities: project planning, scheduling, quantitative risk
analysis, and project performance measurement. RiskyProject Lite has
the same project scheduling and performance measurement
functionalities, but it includes only basic quantitative risk analysis
functionalities.
Windows XP or higher
solutions