Introduction

• General
  • What is risk?
  • 6 questions to define the project
  • The key areas of concern
  • What should risk analysis provide?
  • 3 Ways to view risk management
  • General comments on risk assessment
  • Accountability
  • General comments on planning
  • What are the core process steps to assess a risk?
  • Simple process outline
  • What are the basic overall process steps?
  • Stakeholders
  • Success measures
  • Why carry out Risk Assessment?
• Project Life Cycle
  • Project Life Cycle
  • Project Life Cycle - concept
  • Project Life Cycle - plan
  • Project Life Cycle - execute
  • Project Life Cycle - termination
  • Project Life Cycle - general points

• Terminology
  • Clarification of terms
  • Basic statistical terms

The Risk Management process

• General
• Define
  • Define the project
  • Define the project management process
• Identify the risks and responses
• Organise - prioritise risks and responses
• Ownership - risks, responsibilities and contractors
• Estimation
  • Size the risks
  • Simple estimating of risk
  • Cumulative probability graph
  • Simple estimating of risk - more detail
  • Simple estimation problems
  • Obtaining the estimates
  • Breakdown of variables
• Evaluation
  • Estimates
  • Independent correlation
  • Cumulative probability graph
  • Positive correlation
  • Cumulative probability graph
  • Negative correlation
  • Conditional correlation
  • Cumulative probability graph
  • Cumulative probability graph 2
• Planning
  • Ways to modify plans
  • Plans and strategies
  • Types of plans
  • Dependencies - 4 basic types
  • Dependencies - 4 basic types
    part 2
  • Manage - plans and strategies

Risk issues

• General
  • Identify risk issues
  • Other issues
  • The contractor
  • Other aspects
  • Risk combination
• Assessment of risk
  • Common methods of assessing risk
  • Common methods of assessing risk 2
  • Issue based
  • Checklists
  • Qualitative method
  • Quantitative method
  • Quantitative method part 2
  • Quantitative method part 3
  • Quantitative method part 4

Modelling

• Cost models
  • Simple cost model
  • Cost model
  • Cost model part 2
• Monte Carlo model
  • Monte Carlo simulation
  • Monte Carlo simulation 2
  • Monte Carlo simulation - output
  • Monte Carlo distribution
  • Monte Carlo risk distribution
  • How do we carry out the simulations?
  • Probability density function - PDF
  • PDF - Simplified version

Events

• Uncertain
  • Uncertain events
  • Uncertain events part 2
  • Uncertain events part 3
  • Uncertain events part 4
• Corellated
  • Risk of exceeding the target cost
  • Correlated events
  • Correlated events part 2
  • Correlated events part 3
• 3 point model
  • 2 pathways
  • Simple probability estimation
  • Collecting task information
  • Documentation
  • Task probability
  • Monte Carlo risk distribution
  • Multiple variables

Networks and branching

• Network
  • Simple network
  • Simple network - no lag
  • Simple network - with lag
• Branching
  • Simple branching
  • Complex branching
  • Complex branching part 2
  • Multiple branching
  • Multiple branching part 2
  • Multiple probability branching
  • Multiple probability branching
    part 2
  • Nodes and branching networks
  • Branching networks
• Production example
  • Production example
  • Production example part 2
  • Risk of exceeding target duration

Other

• Business forecast
  • Business forecast
  • Business schedule risk
  • Business revenue and profit risk
  • Business revenue and profit risk 2
  • Business profit simulation
• Other areas to consider when reviewing risk
• Markov chain
• General points to consider
• Task information
  • Risk assessment of a task
  • Risk assessment of a task part 2
• Human relations
  • Negatives
  • Benefits

Common methods of assessing risk

We have already seen that there are particular techniques that may help to identify and put a ‘value’ on the impact of a particular risk.

For example:

• Brain storm
• Interview
• Checklists etc.

The sections below look in a little more detail at some of these techniques.

Issue based

Looks at technical, commercial and managerial aspects and how their risks may impact on the plan.
This could include a simple checklist to complete.

Checklist

Checklists in general suffer from drawbacks (see Checklists).

Qualitative

Different systems exist like scoring and ranking or the use of HIGH / LOW / MEDIUM assessments of impacts.
Scoring requires a degree of subjectivity. As the name suggests, points are awarded according to the perceived degree of risk involved.
The points are then totalled and an overall assessment of the risk established.

Quantitative

We have already seen many techniques for assessing the impact of two activities with a range of values.
Other sections [see Monte Carlo simulation] will look at more detail in the combining of these risks.

See next for method comparison [see Common methods of assessing risk 2].