Moment of Risk and State of Activity
An activity (i.e. a project task) in most real life processes is not a continuous and uniform procedure. Tasks are affected by external events that transform an activity from one state to another. These events have a number of properties. Among them are:
- Event identification (name)
- Probability of occurrence
- Type (e.g. cancel task, increase/reduce duration/cost, move resource to another start, change probability of another risk, start activity, execute mitigation plan, etc.)
- Impact of the event (e.g. an increase in duration of 10%)
One of the most important properties of an event is the actual moment when it occurs during the course of the activity. In most cases, this moment when the event occurs is probabilistic and can be defined using a statistical distribution. In the example shown in Figure 1, the moment of risk is defined by a triangular statistical distribution:
Figure 1: Triangular statistical distribution of an event moment probability
A risk event occurs during the course of an activity and, in practice, the most likely moment of occurrence will be at the middle of the activity. The moment of risk is important for two main reasons:
- Very often, the risk impact depends on when a risk occurs, because the moment of risk can affect, for example, whether an activity will be restarted or cancelled
- The probabilistic moment of risk is significant in adjusting the duration or cost of an activity for actual performance.
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Introduction
