Preventative maintenance is very important in projects, which is why there is a huge emphasis on risk analysis. I see your point that task scheduling can create risk as well since each task can ultimately severely delay the project. Some project planning softwares include features that incorporate employee's 8 hour work days, vacations, and other personal delays. Doing so would allow for a more accurate gant chart. Risks with the ES, EF, LS, and LF dates can be minimized by very well planning. There are many other ways to minimize these risks, as others can elaborate more on.

As DR. Simon stated the old proverb “ if you fail to plan, plan to fail”. This means including risk management helps for a company not to fail suddenly. If a company never considered risk management then when an actual problem did arise they may not be ready for a failure that takes place suddenly. Risk management can be planned ahead time before the project starts wither ES, LS. Having a Risk management strategy in place when something does happen can only help the company. In terms of money with time if something does happen you may need spend more money to get the project done still on time. Therefore having a buffer of money included in a risk management plan can help still keep the project on schedule.

Part of risk management is to make sure all the task are done on time in order to meet the Finish date. in the lecture, for this week we learned about the Gain chart and how it helps to organize tasks, subtask, and ownership of this tasks in a timely manner. Dr. Simon mentioned construct a Gain chart backward helps for risk management analysis from a scheduling perspective, part allocation, shipment,...etc. As we have seen in the network chart, a lot of the task is dependent on others. Also, it is important to calculate your critical path as it gets very complicated for more tasks and subtasks added to the chart. All these factors considered as risk management and could cause a lot of problems if not tracked and taken into consideration.

I think it's important to build in a discovery period for projects. Usually at the project kickoff meetings, stakeholders will immediately want to know what the final delivery date will be. This may not always be attainable especially in the case of complex projects so expectations need to be set efficiently during the discovery period in which PMs and other stakeholders can decompose a project to determine the true scope. It may cost some time initially but it will save a lot of stress in the long-run by giving everyone on board a sense of direction. As Dr. Simon mentioned, it is helpful to create a cumulative gain chart backwards. It's effective to create your schedule working backwards from the committed date and then padding the date with buffer weeks. The buffer weeks can be used to allow for any setbacks that may and most likely will pop up in the project life but allow you to still meet the deadline since it is essentially overestimated rather than underestimated.

Regarding to risk management, as we learned in Week 5, in project management plan you need to measure the risk, Assess, Evaluate, and finally how to manage the risk. By the time a risk actually occurs on any project, it’s too late to do anything about it. That’s why you need to plan for risks from the beginning and keep coming back to do more planning throughout the project. In my opinion, during the planning phase, you need to identify the sources of risk and or develop a risk breakdown structure (RBS) to identify increasing levels of detailed risk analysis.

I think that risk management successfully begins in the planning phase of the project. The more risks and roadblocks that can be identified before the project begins the better equipped the project team will be to handle risks as they come up. On that note, it is unlikely that all risks and roadblocks can be identified during the planning phase, so it is also important to build in time in the schedule for unforeseen risks that can't be identified beforehand. When planning out the project, building in flexible timelines that allow for any possible needed risk management that comes up will allow the project to stay on schedule while addressing risks that weren't expected beforehand.

The risk of not meeting the planned dates, particularly the Late Finish (LF) date, can be mitigated by including some buffer time, as smk45 suggested. During the project planning phase, you want to make sure you account for and mitigate any possible that may arise throughout the project. However, as anyone who has worked on a project team before would know, unexpected risks can arise often in reality. The buffer time allows you to be able to handle unexpected developments without immediately risking getting off of the project schedule. The task slack and project slack that is created from the difference between LF and EF dates also accounts for the same thing.

smk45 took the words out of my mouth by mentioning scope. Fully understanding the scope of the project is the first most important thing in reducing risk because unfavorable results can cause delays that can be accounted for when setting the schedule but new factors that require skills or resources outside of the predicted numbers greatly increase the risk of failure. However, fully understanding the scope is not always possible and unexpected events are bound to occur. For rate determining steps in the gant chart, I suggest assuming a critical failure assumption for the LF to give a larger buffer time. Being generous with rate determining steps also, by the nature of rate determining steps, gives leeway to all the other non-rate determining steps and steps needed to be done in parallel.
Risk analysis is also something that can change over the course of a project. As such, good communication with all involved parties to better understand changes in time and cost from factors that the PM was not aware of or overlooked.
In the end, the process of time management and scheduling is not something that is done at the start of the project and fixed for the entire duration (although that is ideal) and monitoring and adjusting based on the flow of task completion relative to time is the time consuming and arduous task of the person responsible for scheduling.

A successful project will include risk management as part of planning phase. As stated by the professor, "if you fail to plan, plan to fail". Risk management will help the company anticipate issues/ problems and identify mitigations ahead of time so there are preventative actions that can be taken even in the early phases of a project. For example, a company might have have a rule to ensure that all their suppliers produce their components in multiple sites and/or qualify multiple suppliers for the same type of component. This would ensure continuity of supply chain in case of environmental catastrophes that impact suppliers. Initially, risk management may be tedious and take time to evaluate all scenarios across the entire project activities. However this time is money well spent that will ensure a project plan can stay as close as possible to its timeline.

Analyzing the task at hand, comparing the current task with the previous tasks that were done by the company and then taking the appropriate decision as to how much time would be required. When the PM is new this is how he/she will assign the time for the task so as to reduce the risk but as the PM would be experienced he will know the task at hand, the human resources and their capabilities and hence will be better at assigning the time for the tasks and will be a good planner. This will save time as well as money will be utilized effectively, hence reducing the risk of being late.

To minimise the risk of delay, we need to know the finish date and work in the backward direction as studied in the lecture this week. The PM should know how much time each task requires in the process, taking all the factors into consideration i.e sick leave, working hours per day and other necessary factors, we finally knows the project start date and time required for each task. Once we know all this, the risk with the dates will be minimised.

This is a very important task in planning out the ES, EF, LS, and LF dates for a task, because it sets the timeline that must be followed for all progress made on the project. If the range is too broad, some tasks will be done early and further developments will be delayed while waiting for others. If the range between earliest and latest dates is too narrow, then deadlines will be missed, and the project will be delayed even further. Finding this perfect range is a very crucial and difficult task in the planning phase. Bringing in the idea of risk management to determine which tasks have the highest likelihood for delays is essential to properly manage this timeline.

Like previous posts have mentioned, having a full scope of the project is key to completing the project in the proper time frame. Risk analysis is involved in multiple areas of a project, and runs directly parallel with the design controls. The best way to avoid risks is simply for the PM to hold an initial meeting with the team in order to come up with all of the basic risks. Then, the PM should host a meeting with the stakeholders to discuss the risks their team came up with. After the DDP, and risks are assessed, a work breakdown structure (WBS) needs to be created. This WBS will keep the process on course, and will allow all tasks to be completed on time. Do not forget when planning risks, one must account for resource pitfalls. These pitfalls could be vacation times/ sick days, or even other projects. A meeting with the team members of the project can help to avoid these pitfalls. Having open communication with team members, and the stakeholders will minimize most risks; thus allowing the required projects to finish on time.

I agree with what you you guys have said, I just want to add that people with experience on projects are a great asset when determining issues. They may have seen certain things that came up and negatively affected their timelines, or they may know of certain ways of doing things that prevent timing issues in the first place. Good communication and weekly meetings are great, but having a strong foundation to build off of is essential. Having the right people in and of itself is a very good way to manage risk.