Managing Risk Assignments

Risks must be assigned to calculate their impact. If risk is not assigned to any tasks or resources it will remain in risk register, but probability, impact, and score will not be shown.

RiskyProject has two types of risks assignment:
•  Global Risk Assignments – Global risk assignment are those risk assignments, which have a chance of affecting the project as a whole and are not limited to specific tasks or resources. For example, political or weather risks would be assigned as global.
•  Local Assignment – Local risk assignments are those risks that have a chance of affecting only specific tasks or resources. A local risk assignment can affect more than one task or resource. For example, risks affecting the delivery of specific equipment for a certain phase of a project would be assigned local.
You can edit or view risk assignments in the following dialog boxes and views:

Each risk assignment has the following information:
•  Risks can be assigned to Tasks or Resources
•  Risks are defined by the chance of occurrence (from 0% to 100%). The chance can be defined per task (by default) or per duration unit. For example, if there is a 30% chance that task can be restarted per day. If task duration is 2 days, the chance of the risk occurring per task is 60%. This chance calculation option is defined for all tasks and resources for the project in the Risk tab of the Options dialog box:

• Each risk has a different outcome. Outcomes can be schedule and cost related and non-schedule related, which you can customize using Risk Outcome dialog (Risk menu). Standard schedule-related risk outcomes are shown in the table.

•  The Result of outcome is related to the outcomes “Fixed cost increase”, “Relative cost increase”, “Fixed delay”, and “Relative delay”. It defines how much the duration or cost will be increased or reduced. Result of outcomes also used for non-schedule risks and is defined as a percentage. For example, risk outcome “Technology change” has outcome 20%. It also has a verbal definition that comes from Impact labels defined in Format Risk Labels dialog (see Format menu).
•  RiskyProject calculates Risk Impact for duration and cost as a result of sensitivity analysis and displays this in the Risk Register, Global Risk Assignment views and Risk Tabs for Tasks and Resources. Colors are used to indicate the level of correlation between the risk and project duration and cost.
    •  Red indicates a strong correlation
    •  Yellow a medium
    •  Green a weak or no correlation

Colors for threats are the opposite. Particular colors for the risk impact value depend on the risk tolerance defined in Format Risk Matrix dialog box.
One risk can have different outcomes or different results of outcomes. For example, if a risk occurs there is a 10% chance the task will restart, and 10% chance that the task will be cancelled.

The Moment of risk is defined by:
    •  Start time of Risk occurrence;
    •  Most likely Time of risk occurrence;
    •  Finish Time of Risk occurrence
    • Uniform or triangular distributions

Start, Most Likely, and Finish times are entered as a percentage of total task duration starting from beginning of the task.
For example:
    •  Distribution: Triangular
    •  Start: 50%
    •  Most likely: 80%
    •  End: 100%

This description means that by default for A new task with duration 10 days risk would occur after 5th day, but most likely would occur on 8th day.
One risk can have different outcomes or different results of outcomes. For example, if a risk occurs there is a 10% chance the task will restart, and 10% chance that the task will be canceled. To define a risk with alternative outcomes, use the same risk name for the consecutive items. RiskyProject will automatically recognize that this is a discrete outcome of the same risk. Each outcome will be given a number (starting at 1) and all will be colored green in the Mutually Exclusive Risk Alternative column (read only).

To define a risk with alternative outcomes, use the same risk name for the consecutive items. RiskyProject will automatically recognize that this is a discrete outcome of the same risk. Each outcome will be given a number (starting at 1) and all will be colored green in the Mutually Exclusive Risk Alternative column (read only).

Mutually exclusive alternatives must:
•  have the same name
•  not be separated by empty rows
•  belong to the same category. For example, if you have the same risk “Change in requirements” with outcomes Reduce Quality and Fixed Delay, these outcomes will not be mutually exclusive alternatives as they are different risk categories that have different impacts.
Here is an example of risk assignments:

•  RiskyProject flags any mutually exclusive alternative outcomes whose sum or probabilities are greater than 100% with pink shading. In these cases, the calculation results may be incorrect.
•  Use the Indent and Outdent arrows to group risks and create a risk breakdown structure.

See also

Assigning local and global risks

Risks in RiskyProject