Risk Management: Understanding Schedule Risks

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For many organizations, hitting a deadline is the critical metric for project success. Delivering new capability according to schedule builds trust with clients and stakeholders, demonstrates reliability, and usually has significant financial or legal implications. Some analysts suggest that schedule risks constitute approximately a third of the total project risks encountered, which means it is vital they are understood and managed.

Schedule risks primarily fall into three categories: delays, dependencies, and estimation.

Delay Risks

Most schedule risks come from delays, stemming from factors like parts, information, hardware, and decisions. Parts delays are most frequent, with one study showing they added one month on average to a project schedule. The cause is usually related to availability, delivery issues, or defective components. Delays in acquiring necessary information are also common, with one study suggesting these add up to six weeks to the average project. Globalized teams mean that even simple questions can have a 24-hour turnaround time. Slow decision-making is also a significant cause of delay, often due to stakeholder procrastination and poor access to decision-makers.

Dependency Risks

Dependency risks are the next most common type of schedule risk, with one study showing each incident adds over seven weeks of delay. We can subcategorize these risks into dependencies on other projects, infrastructure, and legal factors. Inter-project dependencies are both frequent and also relatively severe. A compounding effect is often evident, where delays in one project can ripple through a chain of other projects. Infrastructure dependencies include technical service interruptions and access to essential resources. Legal and regulatory dependencies are rarer but can significantly impact the schedule when incidents occur.

Estimation Risks

Many project managers rate estimation as their biggest challenge, but the evidence does not necessarily support this. One study suggests that less than ten percent of scheduling issues were caused by poor estimation. Common reasons for estimation errors include steep learning curves (especially of new technology), optimistic judgment calls, and imposed deadlines. The latter category happens when senior stakeholders mandate an aggressive target date with little input from the project team. Such projects have little chance of success. 

Risk Register by ProjectBalm

Effectively managing schedule risks is much easier when you have an appropriate tool. This is one reason we created Risk Register by ProjectBalm.

Our goal was to automate best practice risk management techniques, and do so via an elegant, usable interface that works with you, and not against you. Risk Register will help you to identify, analyse, treat and monitor risks more easily and effectively than ever before.

If you are experienced at risk management, you will find in Risk Register a tool that works the way you want it to work. If you are new to risk management, our documentation and videos will take you through the whole risk management process, giving lots of useful examples.

Risk Register is fully compatible with risk management standards such as ISO 31000, and can also be used for governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) programs such as Sarbanes-Oxley and PCI. And, of course, Risk Register allows you to easily distinguish between opportunities and threats.

Over the last few years, we've grown to become the most popular risk management solution in the Jira marketplace and we are now an Atlassian Platinum Partner. Why not try out Risk Register by ProjectBalm for yourself?