TOPIC: Schedule Risk & Reserve: Present in Bar/Gantt charts?

Hello all,

As I try to wrap my head around schedule risk, I always get tripped up in how it is or is not displayed in a project schedule bar/gantt chart. I realize that activities can be 3 point estimated and that based on STD deviation there is more or less risk to those activities. Also that possible known risk events and the appropriate responses will have time needed to implement.

For cost, things are much simpler and contingency reserves are built directly into the cost baseline for a known amount that can be consumed or altered via change control if the cost baseline changes. It is visible, its a known bucket and I understand the budget diagrams shown in study materials.

My mind seems to want to have a schedule contingency reserve buffer at the end of my project, but I haven't seen such a thing in my learning. I know I must not be grasping how and where the risk is aggregated and shown. I know that it is recommended to give project completion dates as a range, and that monte carlo and other analyses can provide assistance in calculating the likelihood of hitting a date. Is all of this supposed to be captured by the pessimistic estimate for activity duration?

While I get questions right about schedule risk (the limited number I have answered) I feel there is still a knowledge gap.

Any help on understanding how and where schedule risk is fully defined and where the schedule risk resides and is consumed/monitored during a project would be greatly appreciated.

David, I can't tell you how schedule risk presents itself in the exam, but I can tell you how I deal with it in real life! Schedule confidence levels are defined in the project initiation documentation. Then I add the appropriate contingency as a specific task on the Gantt chart, per phase (which will also have been specified as how to do in the project management plan). As the project progresses, and contingency time is not used, it is removed from previous phases (hence the delivery date gets closer, although in practice, given how little time we normally allocate as contingency for testing, I will sometimes extend the later contingency tasks so the end date does not move - assuming the sponsor is OK with this).

I am also sure that some project team members build 'unseen' contingency in to some of the delivery dates they give me for their tasks.