Schedule Risk Analysis With Acumen: Different Activity Types

Marty Fuentes
| January 14, 2021

This article provides an overview on how varying inputs and parameters affect the date outputs, in particular, the P0, P50, and P100 dates, in the Schedule Risk Analysis (SRA) with software Deltek Acumen Fuse. By understanding how Acumen behaves with respect to varying conditions, schedulers, risk managers, and key stakeholders alike will be guided on providing only realistic input values for the SRA.

In this analysis, the activity types are varied while holding all other parameters constant. These activity types include Task Dependent, Level of Effort, WBS Summary, and Milestones. A simple schedule was developed using Primavera P6 for a straightforward understanding of the relationship between the inputs and the SRA results generated from Acumen.

The investigation provides results that risks (threats) can only be mapped to Task Dependent and Milestone type activities. Assigning risk to Level of Effort or WBS Summary activities will not return risk exposure dates.

See also:

Different Delay Analysis Techniques

Schedule Risk Analysis With Acumen: Different Calendars

Schedule Risk Analysis With Acumen: Different Activity Status

Activity Types (Case 03).

Input

Risk assigned to a project with different types of activity constraint.
1 risk mapped to a single activity.
1,000 iterations set in Deltek Acumen Fuse.
All other parameters are set to be the same in each case/project shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Primavera Schedule for Different Activity Types.

Table 1. Risk Input for Different Activity Types.

Output

Figure 2. Risk Exposure Histogram Generated from Acumen (see tabulated values in Table 2).

Figure 3. Risk Drivers Generated from Acumen (see tabulated values in Table 2).

Analysis

Tabulation of the results of Figures 2 and 3 are shown in Table 2 along with calculations for analysis.

Table 2. Results and Calculations

Activities in case C03A have the same deterministic dates (DT). With the risk mapped to a Task Dependent activity (C03A-020), both the monitored activities C03A-020 and C03A-030 do have the same risk exposure outputs.

When the risk is assigned to a Level of Effort type of an activities as in C03B, the DT of the schedule is not affected.

Similar to C03B but this time assigning the risk to a WBS Summary kind of an activity in C03C, the DT does not change as well. Accordingly, no risk exposure nor risk driver diagrams were generated by Acumen.

In C03D, the risk is mapped to a Milestone activity type and the result of the schedule analysis yielded dates similar to that in C03A.

Takeaways

Risks (Threats) can be mapped to Milestone type and Task Dependent activities.
Risks should not be assigned to Level of Effort and WBS Summary activities.
Acumen will not generate results (no risk exposure and risk driver diagrams) if risks are mapped to a Level of Effort or a WBS Summary type activity.