Switch from project to portfolio risk analysis

September 1, 2015 Switch from project to portfolio risk analysis RiskyProject Lite and RiskyProject Professional perform analysis of single project only. If you want to preform risk analysis based on shared list of risks for your organization, you would need to use RiskyProject Enterprise. RiskyProject Enterprise you two components: server and client. The server component is a database which needs to be installed on the server. The client component is essentially RiskyProject Professional or RiskyProject Lite, which can be installed on client computer. The client component needs to be configured to talk with the database on the server. If you already have RiskyProject Professional you need to install server component and configure RiskyProject Professional connection to the database. All instructions how to install server component can be found in RiskyProject Administrator’s guide, which comes with RiskyProject install package. Server database is using Microsoft SQL Server or SQL Server Express version 2005 and up. When you install RiskyProject server database you need to go Tools->Update RiskyProject License. The License Wizard dialog will come up. There are three possible configurations of RiskyProject: Trial License, Regular Desktop license, and Enterprise client. You current configuration will be grayed out. You select different configuration: in your case it will be Enterprise client. After this you need to close RiskyProject Professional. When you start RiskyProject again you need to configure connection to the database as it is described in RiskyProject Administrator’s guide. After you configure connection between RiskyProject Professional and server database you may perform Monte Carlo Schedule and Cost risk analysis for all particular projects within a portfolio. Risks and results of Monte Carlo simulations will be saved in the database and shared between different users on your organization. http://www.intaver.com/IntaverFrm/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1101

What is the best distribution to use for schedule duration?

August 31, 2015 What is the best distribution to use for schedule duration? In reality, there is no “Best” distribution to use for schedule or cost risk analysis. The statistical distribution for any parameter (cost, duration etc) should be the one that best fits your data. If this data does exist for particular type of activities, then you can select the distribution which best fits your data or you can create a custom distribution. However, in reality, most of our users do not have this data available for the type of activity. In these cases, we suggest using Triangular statistical distribution as the default. Triangular distributions only require that you provide Best Case, Most Likely, and Worst Case values without requiring any additional parameters. In our experience, triangular distributions are used in 90% of schedule risk analysis and to a lesser degree in cost risk analysis (as the this data is more readily available.) http://www.intaver.com/IntaverFrm/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1092

Monte Carlo Schedule Risk Analysis with Actuals

August 29, 2015 Monte Carlo Schedule Risk Analysis with Actuals The Monte Carlo analysis is always performed with taking in to account actuals. Here is how it works: * If task is fully completed, risks and uncertainties are not applied to the tasks * If task is partially completed, the risks are applied only to remaining duration. For example, if 50% of task is completed and original risk probability is 60%, effective risk probability will be 30%. * If task has a statistical distribution for duration, it will be applied automatically to the remaining duration. For example, if task originally supposes to be completed in 10 days, but after 2 days only 10% is done, new total task duration will be 20 days. Remaining duration will be 18 days. If you defined low and high duration as 90% and 120% of original duration, the same coefficients will be applied to the remaining duration. So low remaining duration will be 18 days * 0.9 = 16.2 days and high duration will be 18 days * 1.2 = 21.6 days. You may always define statistical distribution for remaining duration manually, as it is shown below. http://www.intaver.com/IntaverFrm/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1086

Merge bias in Schedule Risks Analysis, or Portfolio Effect

August 29, 2015 Merge bias in Schedule Risks Analysis, or Portfolio Effect After importing or creating a schedue into RiskyProject, they input the information that they have gathered from a risk workshop. The steps are to this are usually straight forward: 1. Enter in the Risk name in the Risk Register. 2. Add additional metadata about the risk to the Risk Properties form. 3. Open the Drag N' Drop Risks view. 4. Select the tasks to which you want to assign a risk 5. Drag the risk onto the tasks and the Assign risks to tasks dialog box opens. Here you can quickly add the chance (probability) and outcomes (impacts). When you calculate the results, it appears that you have almost no chance of completing on the original budget or schedule. This is a very common. First, deterministic schedule rarely account for 'merge bias' or " portfolio effect'. These are two factors that that cannot be measured by critical path calculations and tend to expand the expected values for both schedule and budget (due to time dependent costs). Merge bias occurs when parallel (activities occurring at the same time) all share the same successor and the successor cannot start until all of the predecessors are complete. This is very common and if any of the activities is delayed, even if they are not on the original critical path, they can cause delays. In large projects, there tend to be many parallel activities and without Monte Carlo simulations we can not measure the possible implications. Second, the portfolio effect occurs when you have many activities with distributions linked in a predecessor network. In this case, project tasks tend to have right-skewed distributions because activities have only a limited amount in which you can decrease length, but theoretically at least, the activities of durations have no limit. In these circumstances, the causes the average values (p50) of the task's duration distribution to be to the right of the Most Likely (the peak). The combination of the precedent network and risk skewed distributions means that mathematically (and in reality) that the Most Likely value for the Project shifts towards the average value and in practical terms can significantly extend what you can realistically expect your schedule to be. http://www.intaver.com/IntaverFrm/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1087

Two New Intaver Institute's White Papers

August 26, 2015 Two New Intaver Institute's White Papers Intaver Institute published two new white paper. The first paper is Behavioral Traps in Project Management. You are driving down a highway, and as usual, you have chosen the fast lane. However, today, it seems to be moving more slowly than usual and when you glance to the side, the adjacent lane appears to be moving faster. After 5 minutes without improvement, you are starting to wonder whether you should switch lanes, but because you have already spent some time what is normally the fast lane, you hope that it will eventually resume its normal pace. Essentially, you have become entrapped. In this paper we will discuss behavioral traps or situations where people become engaged in rational course of actions which later become undesirable. The second paper is called Memory Errors in Project Management. A lot of the mental mistakes we are prone to in project management are related memory. Often, we cannot properly assess events because we have forgotten similar events that occurred in our past. In this paper we will explore how certain features of our memory can affect project management and how we can improve our memory and hopefully improve our project management. http://www.intaver.com/Articles/Article_BehavioralTrapsInProjectManagement.pdf http://www.intaver.com/Articles/Article_MemoryInProjectManagement.pdf

Two new webinars are announced

August 17, 2015 Two new webinars are announced Intaver Institute announced two new webinars: How to analyze and manage project risks: Tuesday, November 10, 2015 Cost and Schedule Risk Analysis with RiskyProject: Tuesday, Jan 12, 2016 Next scheduled Intaver Institute webinar "Creating Risk Adjusted Project Plans for Aerospace and Defence Projects" will occur Tuesday, September 8, 2015 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM MST. To register for this webinar please click here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4168586496246735106

New Intaver Institute's channel reseller: SoftLine

August 4, 2015 New Intaver Institute's channel reseller: SoftLine Softline is a new Intaver Institute's channel reseller located in Russia. For more information about Softline please visit Softline web site. For information about RiskyProject Professional in please Russian click here: http://www.intaver.com/riskyprojectprof_rus.html