September 6, 2015 Q: Order of views in Monte Carlo Statistics Report The statistics report looks pretty useful feature for schedule risk analysis. We would prefer however to have sensitivity analysis shown before the other charts. And we would probably like fewer charts per task. A: You can change the order of views shown in Statistics Report with results of Monte Carlo simulations. This view shows results of Monte Carlo simulation of project schedules, including probability disruptions for task and project duration, start and finish time, cost, as well as results of sensitivity analysis presented as tornado diagrams. Not sure if you noticed, but there is a Customize Report button that is located at the bottom of the list of tasks on the left of the view. If you click it, the Format Statistics Report dialog box opens. The main options to set up the chart data are located in the middle of the dialog, the Charts and Data and Order of Data tables option groups. The first group allows to set up how the frequency and cumulative probability data is shown in the Report. Click a checkbox to enable that chart or data type. The only condition is that you can either combine the Monte Carlo frequency and probability plots into one chart or show them separately, you cannot have both. In the Order of Data Tables, this allows you to enable the charts for the different data types as well as, using the Move Up and Move Down button, create and set the default order of the charts. http://www.intaver.com/IntaverFrm/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1110

September 8, 2015 Q: Statistics report for project risk analysis I have runs a Monte Carlo risk analysis and have seen the results in the Analysis views. But when I open the Statistics Report, I cannot get it to show any results. A: The issue is most likely because you have not actually selected any tasks to view. Statistic report shows results of Monte Carlo schedule and cost risk analysis for selected task and for whole project. In the Statistics Report, just clicking on a task does not select it. There are two methods that you can use to “select” tasks in the Statistics Report. The first is to click in the Display Statistics Report checkbox. By default it is located to the right of the task name. In this example, for identification I have added text D to the column description, though by default it is blank. You can add a identifier to the column by right-clicking on the column header and clicking Modify Column: Alternatively, to quickly select multiple tasks, add an identifier to each task you need to report on to a text field. For example, add the identifier “RPT” in the Text1 field. Go to Schedule > Zoom and Find > Find. Enter the search parameters and click Find. This will select all of the Report tasks in the Statistics Report View. You can now generate your Monte Carlo statistics reports. Tip. You can add the identifier in Microsoft Project or other tool as long as it is in Text1 to Text5 fields. http://www.intaver.com/IntaverFrm/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1112

Percentile Options for Monte Carlo Simulations

September 9, 2015 Q: Percentile Options for Monte Carlo Simulations How do the Calculation Options for Low, Base and High affect the Monte Carlo simulations? Do they affect how the low and high estimates (inputs) are interpreted? For example, the default setting appears to be P10 and P90. If I have a task with a 10 day most likely and add 8 for low and 15 for high. Does 8 days represent that the task could be completed in 8 days 10% of the time, but there is still a possibility it could be lower (e.g. 7 days?) A: No, the Monte Carlo calculation settings on control what values are shown in the risk analysis result views. In RiskyProject, in the risk analysis views you will see columns for Low, Mean, and High. The Calculation option is indicting what the P value from the Monte Carlo analysis represent for Low and High duration, costs, start time, finish time, etc. For example, if you would like to set schedule margins at P80 for duration, you can set this up in the Calculation Options so that the P value is displayed automatically for Project and task results.

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