Schedule Risk Analysis: relate risk details of project activities with completion & cost schedule

Every project of any working domain is planned initially according to the timeline. Each chunk of the task is labeled with a deadline which is to be met, and in that same stipulated time risks are also to be resolved. Risks are uncertain one cannot think in between the project implementation the different ways or alternative plans to resolve it. Such approach will push your project completion deadline back and it won’t be possible to wrap up entire implementation as per the scheduled plan and above all your expense bill will keep on rolling up. Here, comes the Schedule Risk Analysis in the picture. This technique will make your project meet with completion time or can be possible you can complete the task before time without hindering project budget.

Schedule Risk Analysis (SRA): It is a simple concept that associates risk details of a project task to project schedule so that crucial details of specific projects can be identified and uncertain elements that impact project duration and budget can be known.

Estimations related to time and expenses are based on predictions. When initial planning for the project gets commenced based on individual tasks time, resources and budget are allocated. But taking into consideration varied risk aspects prior project implementation will help you to predict accurate time as well as cost.

Below are the four steps of schedule risk analysis that can help to measure your project’s baseline schedule’s sensitivity,

• Baseline Schedule: This is initial phase in which you need to mention start and finish time of each project task, with previous and current calculations or estimates, with or without the inclusion of resources. Different techniques like PERT, CRM etc are available which can be used to determine baseline schedule of project tasks.

Once the schedule is planned it must be agreed by shareholders and then effectively it should be implemented. Before actually commencing the project it is necessary to create a schedule so that project duration and budget are taken into consideration by all interested stakeholders.

• Define risk & uncertainty: Time and cost estimations are subjects of constant change. And both of these factors require analytical skills along with basic understanding of statistics. This all understanding will help the project manager to accurately know the probability and distribution functions related to uncertainty.

• Monte Carlo Simulations: It is a technique that is used to determine the risks or uncertainty that impact in prediction or forecasting procedures.  Monte Carlo Simulations implements multiple runs simulating real project tasks. Every stimulation run generates a duration and estimation for each task which includes risks and uncertainty that were considered in above second step. In stimulation run, engine archives all project schedules & complex paths so that each task’s activity can be measured in terms of task sensitivity & variations of familiar impacts that can affect cost & duration.

• Sensitivity Results: The results of schedule risk analysis comprises of criticality and sensitive of project tasks. Following are the measures that determine whether the activity is critical or not,
  • Criticality Index (CI): It helps to determine whether the activity is on the critical
  • Significance Index (SI): With this index relative importance of an activity can be known.
  • Schedule Sensitivity Index (SSI): The relative importance of a task can be known by taking into consideration the CI.
  • Cruciality Index: It quantifies the relation between task’s duration & cost and overall project duration with cost.

Above all measures or steps will assist project managers working in any domain to determine sensitive impacts that can affect project’s final time and cost. Through Schedule Risk Analysis probability of project success can be visioned, high risking factors can be highlighted and same can be mitigated in favor of total time and total project cost.