Relative vs. fixed (absolute) delays for project risks

September 2, 2015 Q: Relative vs. fixed (absolute) delays for project risks When you are adding risks, their is a choice between fixed (absolute) durations in days or relative delays. When should you use fixed rather than relative outcomes? MTC465 Posts: 3Joined: Tue Jun 06, 2006 12:57 amLocation: USA A: When you perform quantitative project risk analysis in RiskyProject, you need to define risks with their outcomes or how the risk will affect particular task or resource. Risks belonging to different risk categories will have different outcomes. Risk affecting task duration may cause fixed delay (certain number of days), relative delay (for example task may be delayed on 10%), task restart, and task cancelation. You may also enter combination of these outcomes, as it shown on the screen shot below. They are called alternatives. Particular type of outcome depends on your schedule and data you have available. For example, you know that the risk “component is delayed on customs” is a fixed delay, because it takes fixed number of days to clear the customs. However risk “delay caused by contractor” is a relative delay because it depends on duration of original work: contractor just works slow on underestimated duration of the task. In certain cases, for example due to changing of requirements, the task must be started again. In this case the outcome should be “restart task”. Please note that RiskyProject also have fixed and relative increase of cost and income. Also if you include negative values to duration, cost, and income increase, it will be opportunity, not a threat. If some risk alternatives have positive outcome and some negative, the risk will have both threat and opportunity. http://www.intaver.com/IntaverFrm/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1102