Software de ayuda para hacer un plan detallado de
RISK ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT
You've used Microsoft Project to create a detailed plan for your project and
you believe you've accounted for everything.
What could possibly go wrong? Plenty! The question is "Where will the project go
away and what can you do to avert disaster?" Assessing and managing risks is the
best weapon you have against project catastrophes. By evaluating your plan for
potential problems and developing strategies to address them, you'll improve your
chances of a successful, if not perfect, project.
There are four steps to assessing and managing risks, and effective risk management
requires all four of them.
Plan for risks
Monitor and manage risks
To adequately analyze risk, you'll need a detailed plan. So, the best time to perform an
initial risk analysis is just prior to saving your baseline and starting the project. But don't
make the mistake of thinking that risk analysis is a one-time task. You'll want to reevaluate
the plan and your risk analysis from time to time throughout the project and whenever
major deviations from the plan occur.
1. IDENTIFY RISKS
There are numerous ways to identify risks. If you have a limited amount of time, the best
ways to identify risks are to:
Review the task list and schedule.
Brainstorm and talk with the experts.
Review the Task List and Schedule
In your Microsoft® Project plan, look first at the critical path tasks, then at tasks that are
almost on the critical path, and finally at noncritical path tasks. Look for:
Tasks for which your team has no expertise. The duration and cost estimates for these tasks
are more likely to be inaccurate.
Duration and cost estimates that are aggressive. Ask the estimators how confident they are
in their estimates, especially for critical path tasks. Helpful views.
Situations where you have a limited number of resources that can do particular tasks and
where those resources are fully allocated, overallocated, or may become unavailable. A
resource can become unavailable when it leaves your organization or because of
commitments within the organization. Helpful views.
Tasks with several predecessors. The more dependencies a task has, the greater the
likelihood of a delay.
Tasks with long durations or a lot of resources. The estimates for these larger tasks are
more likely to be inaccurate.
Brainstorm and Talk with the Experts
All of your project risks may not be apparent from analyzing the project plan. It's worth
your time to call a brainstorming meeting with key resources on your project. Ask these
people where they see the most risk to the project. You may be surprised at what you
uncover. If you have some experienced project managers available, have them review your
plan. Also, talk with people who have expertise in particular areas of the project. For
example, if you're planning to use an outside contractor, talk to people who have used that
contractor or other contractors.
2. QUANTIFY RISKS
Quantifying risks is a discipline unto itself. Your options range from sophisticated
probability analysis to the simpler techniques outlined below. Obviously, the accuracy of
your results is commensurate with the techniques you use.
This article outlines some basic, but effective techniques to quantify risks:
Determine your tolerance levels.
Assign a probability to each risk.
Assign a cost to each risk.
Assign a priority to each risk.
Determine Your Tolerance Levels
If you work for a small company, an additional project cost of $250,000 or a delay of two 2
months may put your entire company at risk. If you work for a large organization, these
overruns may be acceptable for a project. Write down some hard numbers. How much cost
and delay is acceptable? Remember that this isn't your preference, it's just the bottom-line
numbers you can tolerate.
Assign a Probability
For each risk, determine how likely it is to occur. Unless you're using statistical methods,
you'll assign a probability based on your team's knowledge of the risk. Use these tips to
identify more likely risks:
Use the Microsoft Project PERT analysis tools to see how likely you are to hit your dates.
If the task durations in your plan differ significantly from those in the PERT analysis, then
the tasks are at higher risk. Using the PERT analysis tools.
Review archived projects to see if similar tasks from the past have taken longer than your
estimates or have cost more.
Find out your team's confidence level. If the resources that will do the work aren't
comfortable with your cost or duration estimates, then the risk is more likely to occur.
Assign a Cost
The cost of a risk can be measured in dollars, lost time, lost quality, or all three. Try to
quantify the cost of a risk, even as a range such as $25,000–$50,000. One way to evaluate
costs is to save a copy of your Microsoft Project plan, and then modify the copy to perform
a what-if analysis and see the impact if a risk does occur.
Assign a Priority
Based on your tolerance level, the potential cost of the risk, and the probability of it
occurring, assign a priority to the risk. For example, if the cost of a risk is beyond your
tolerance level and it is very likely to occur, assign a high priority to the risk. Use these
priorities to determine which risks to focus your efforts on first.
3. PLAN FOR RISKS
Once you've identified and quantified risks, you need to plan for them. Because risk
planning can take a lot of time and energy, you may want to plan for only the high-priority
risks or the medium- to high-priority risks.
Identifying triggers for each risk.
Identifying proactive, contingency or mitigation plans for each risk.
Triggers are indicators that a risk has occurred or is about to occur. The best triggers tell
you well in advance that a problem is occurring.
To identify triggers, talk with the people who are most likely to cause the risk to occur and
those who are most likely to feel its impact. Ask them how they would know that the
problem is occurring. Start with how they would know that the problem has already
occurred, and then work backward to determine how they would know before the problem
As the project manager, consider how the risk would be reflected in the plan. Would the
plan show overtime for specific resource on earlier tasks? Would the plan show delays in
For each risk you're addressing, create a watchlist that shows the possible triggers, when
they are likely to occur, and who should watch for the trigger.
Once you've identified triggers, you need to create action plans. You can plan for risks in
one of three basic ways:
Allay the risk by taking actions ahead of time, thereby decreasing the likelihood of the
problem occurring. For example, if you're dependent on a single resource with specific
expertise, consider training another resource in that expertise.
Mitigate the risk by lowering the consequences if the problem does occur, thereby reducing
the risk's impact. For example, if you're dependent on an outside vendor making its delivery
dates, your contract with the vendor might include penalties for late delivery, in order to
offset your potential losses.
Respond to the risk with a contingency plan, if the problem does occur. For example, if a
task is at risk of being delayed, your plan may be to add additional resources to the task.
Your contingency plan should include any work that must be done ahead of time to make
the contingency successful. For example, you'll want to make sure that the additional
resources are available in case you need them.
Keep in mind that risk management plans can have unexpected ramifications. Model each
plan in Microsoft Project to see the plan's impact on the project. Look for new risks that
occur as a result of the plan and address them in it.
4. MONITOR AND MANAGE RISKS
Your risk management plan is in place. Now your job is to make sure you and others on the
project team act on it. Take any actions necessary according to your proactive, mitigation,
and contingency plans. Monitor your watchlist to see if triggers are occurring, and
implement contingency plans as needed. Be sure to reassess your risks regularly. You
might find the following ideas useful for monitoring your risks:
Include a Risks section in status reports and request that resources identify any assumptions
they are making, as well as any new risks they see.
Set up regular meetings with team members to reevaluate the risk management plan and to
identify new risks to the project.
Each time your project's actual progress varies significantly from the plan, reassess the
risks and reevaluate your risk management plan.
With a little preplanning and thought, you can significantly decrease the risks to your
project. Use the tips in this article to implement risk assessment and management to your
advantage. We hope your project will be a successful one!
For more detailed information about risk assessment and management, visit the Project
Management Institute's Web site at www.pmi.org and review their PMBOK Guide.
HELPFUL VIEWS FOR SEEING DURATIONS AND COSTS
View the costs for each task by applying the Cost table to the Gantt Chart view. For more
information about viewing task costs, see View the cost per task in the Microsoft Project
98 online Help.
View the costs for resources and their costs on various tasks by applying the Cost table to
the Resource Sheet view, and then inserting the Standard Rate column to view the
resource's standard pay rate. For more information about viewing resource costs, see View
the cost per resource in the Microsoft Project 98 online Help.
You can view the costs of tasks across time in the Task Usage view. For more information
about the Task Usage view, see The Task Usage view in the Microsoft Project 98 online
You can view the costs of resources across time in the Resource Usage view. For more
information about the Resource Usage view, see The Resource Usage view in the
Microsoft Project 98 online Help.
View durations in the Gantt Chart view, which is the default view in Microsoft Project.
You can sort the chart by duration to review the durations in order from shortest to longest.
You can also sort by priority to review durations in order of task priority. You can use the
GanttChartWizard to view the critical path and review the durations of critical path tasks.
Helpful Views for Seeing Resource Allocation
View resource allocation in the Resource Usage view. For more information about resource
allocation, see Check resource workload in the Microsoft Project 98 online Help.
Helpful Features for Watchlists
You can create your risk management plan and watchlist in any application. For example,
you might want to create the plan in Microsoft Word. You can then incorporate the
watchlist information, such as triggers, into your Microsoft Project plan by attaching the
information to tasks as notes. For more information about using notes, see Add and view
notes in the Microsoft Project 98 online Help.
If your watchlist is on an Intranet or the Internet, you can insert a hyperlink to the Web
page. For more information about adding hyperlinks, see Insert a hyperlink in the
Microsoft Project 98 online Help.
If you're familiar with Visual Basic® for Applications, you can use it to create macros in
Microsoft Project to alert you when trigger events occur. For more information about
Visual Basic and macros, click Visual Basic on the Index tab in the Microsoft Project 98
Using the PERT Analysis Tools
To perform a PERT analysis, you'll need to enter an optimistic, pessimistic, and expected
duration for each task you want to analyze. For more information about performing a PERT
analysis, see use a what-if analysis to analyze your schedule in the Microsoft Project 98