Integrated Project Management

The History of Risk Analysis

The problem recognized early in IPM development was to discover how to set up a procedure so risk factors could be added to the project's critical path that would cover task overruns and not pad the project. The objective was to finish the project—not early or late—but at the planned time! In other words, how could one add a risk factor, or series of risk factors, to the Gantt chart that allowed for some overruns but not overstate the overruns?

This problem was approached theoretically and experimentally. We decided that risk analysis should be based on a task-by-task analysis. We recognized that by going into detail, we could improve accuracy. We asked ourselves, “What additional information do task leaders have ...