Reviewed in Project Manager Today
January 1999

Excerpts:

Dr. David Hillson began his editorial in the first issue of The International Journal of Project and Business Risk Management by saying: "Effective management of risk is now recognised as an essential component of successful projects and businesses. The uncertainties faced by managers at all levels have increased in scope and intensity and processes, tools, and techniques must develop to match the challenge." Palisade's @RISK for Project is such a tool that integrates itself info Project and adds its own toolbar and data columns to display.

There is a detailed tutorial on the CD that explains the program's basics. Viewing the tutorial is essential, as is reading the well-written, illustrated manual.

In a project containing many uncertainties - don't they all! - it's always useful to know which uncertainties had the greatest effect on the outputs during a simulation. The Sensitivity Analysis feature summarises this information into Tornado diagrams. Another feature, Scenario Analysis, identifies input combinations that have the greatest effect in achieving a desired output that you specify.

Once the simulations have finished and you have the tables of likely outcomes, you must decide on the actions you'll take as you would in any other circumstances. The benefit of having @RISK is that you'll now have more information about the statistical probability of events rather than just having to rely on your own experience...and your gut feeling. In the absence of a fully-functioning crystal ball, you can't expect much more.