In the estimating, planning and management of any project, large or small, an understanding of the impact of risk is critical. This book explains how the growing number of people choosing to or forced to organise their work as projects can make realistic assessments of the uncertainty affecting costs, timescale and revenue, before commitments are made. A clear analysis of the role of uncertainty is combined in this concise and practical handbook with simple, cost-effective techniques for measuring and modelling the overall risk to a project's budget and schedule. There is advice and help here for the whole project team, including project managers; bid managers; project sales professionals; planners; estimators; managers running a project-based business; and consultants and auditors advising a projects business. Drawn from the author's extensive experience on projects ranging in scale from a few man-months to hundreds of man-years, the book will beelevant to anyone involved in a project-based business. Examples are presented as simple models, built in spreadsheets using the @Risk software package. No more than basic knowledge of Lotus 1-2-3?? or Excel?? will be required by the reader.

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If you are new to advanced techniques in project risk management you'll like the way the author succinctly covers all of the key elements of project risk assessment, project finance forecasting, and simulation and modeling. Considering the complexity of the subject area, and the fact that both probability and simulation techniques are covered, the author does a remarkable job of conveying the wide range of topics in a scant 134 pages. I especially liked the generous use of graphs and examples, and the way each topic was broken down into easy-to-grasp facts and steps.

However, even without @Risk you can learn much about risk assessment from this book, including a refresher on probability distributions, how to perform an assessment using manual techniques, and modeling and simulation with an emphasis on Monte Carlo simulation.

The only problem I have with this book is that it's out of date with respect to @Risk, which has evolved into a much more capable tool since this book was first published 7 years ago. Since one of the this book's strengths is the way it teaches how to apply @Risk to real world project risk assessment, the fact that it's out of date with respect to the software version diminishes its value.

2 of 2 found the following review helpful:

@Risk Simulation for IT ProjectDec 13, 2004
By John Zhao
This book makes sense to IT project or very samll, simple and non-complex construction projects when more sophiscated and expensive analysis tools could not be afforded. For large Oil & Gas or mega construction projects, this book is somewhat misleading. I bought the book hoping to find a model which will help me analyze project cost estimate / schedule uncertainty, therefore establish the contingency as well as risk response plan, I was quite disappointed paying over $100 for this 140-page booklet.