PR03-Qualitative Risk Analysis in Primavera

Risks are any uncertain events or conditions that, if they occur, have a positive or negative effect on project objectives.

Use the integrated risk management feature to identify, categorize, and prioritize risks, to assign an owner (a person responsible for managing the risk) to each potential risk, to assign risks to activities that could be effected by the risk, and to perform qualitative analysis on each project risk. You can respond to a risk and create an associated risk response.

Managing Risks

When a risk is identified, it is automatically assigned to the open project. If more than one project is open, the project it assigns the risk to depends on the current grouping. Then you can assign the risk to activities it may impact. Assigning a risk to an activity, or an activity to a risk, creates a risk assignment. A risk can be assigned to multiple activities; likewise an activity can be assigned to multiple risks.

Based on risk assignments and impact parameters that you can define for each risk, the application generates data, including an overall risk score, discussed below, that you can use to evaluate the significance of the risk. Other data include the potential start date of the risk, the potential end date of the risk, and the potential cost the risk may impose. A subsection below discusses the calculation used to determine potential cost.

Based on your qualitative analysis of the risk, you can respond to the risk and develop a response, also discussed below.

How the risk score is calculated

The application calculates an overall risk score. There are actually two overall risk score fields: The Score field that displays in the Pre-Response section of the Risks, Impact tab, and the Score field that displays in the Post-Response section of that tab if you respond to a risk and complete the Post-Response fields. The following discussion refers to both the Pre- and Post-Response Score fields generically as the Score fields because both are calculated using the same equation.

The Score field is calculated based on the values you select for three fields (located on that same tab): Probability, Cost, and Schedule. Two of these fields, Cost and Schedule, are known as the impact fields.

The Probability field and each impact field have these possible values: Very High, High, Medium, Low, Very Low, and Negligible. The application uses the highest value selected for the Cost and Schedule fields as the overall impact value. The application determines the Score by plotting the overall impact value with the value entered for Probability, as shown in the table below.

For example, if you enter the value Low for Cost and the value Medium for Schedule, the application uses Medium, the highest of the two, as the overall impact value. The application then uses the table below to determine the Score value by plotting the overall impact and Probability values. The columns in the table represent the overall impact values (Negligible through Very High), while the rows represent the Probability values (Very High through Negligible). The application determines the Score as the number that corresponds to the intersection of the applicable Impact column and Probability row. So, to continue our example, if you entered a value of High for Probability, the Score would display as 14, the number shown where the Impact Medium column intersects the Probability High row.