Risk Drivers
Use the Risk Drivers chart to display the key drivers within a risk model.
Acumen Risk uses a metric known as Schedule or Cost Contribution Factor that reports drivers in terms of actual cost and duration rather than abstract relative percentage-based metrics.
The Acumen Risk Drivers chart differentiates between logic, non-workdays, uncertainty, and risk events when reporting key risk drivers. In addition, it can be configured to report risk drivers at any level of the cost/schedule hierarchy, bringing more meaning to executive risk reporting.
The chart displays duration in days by default; however, you can display duration in hours and vice versa by changing the display settings on the S1 // Projects tab.
When you click on an activity in Risk Drivers, Acumen traces the predecessors of the activity to see if they contribute to its risk exposure. If they do, they are a driver. When you click on a hierarchical node, Acumen finds the last activity by date in that node and traces from there back. When tracing back, Acumen traces the per-iteration driving path. Delay contributions are attributed to specific activities.
You can use the menu to customize the chart, including setting bar mode and detail levels and adding vertical scrolling.
Schedule and Cost Contribution (Risk Drivers)
Schedule and Cost Contribution are two risk metrics that report the actual schedule/cost impacts on any given activity (or group) in terms of currency and duration. The Schedule Contribution tornado shows which activities are the biggest risk drivers on the selected activity and, more importantly, it reports in terms of duration.
Risk Drivers Tracing
When you click on an Activity in risk drivers, Acumen traces the predecessors of the activity to see if they contribute to its risk exposure. If they do, they are a driver. When you click on a hierarchy node, Acumen finds the last activity by date in that node and traces back from there.
When tracing back, Acumen traces the per-iteration driving path. This tends to show few logic delays as delay contributions are attributed to specific activities.
Risk Event Drivers
In addition to reporting cost and schedule contribution by activity, you can configure the Risk Drivers chart to report the risk events contributing significantly to risk exposure.
Risk Driver Chart Configuration
You can configure the Risk Drivers chart to display either summary bars or segmented bars differentiating between logic, non-workdays, uncertainty, and risk events. In detailed mode, you can determine the specific driver behind each activity's contribution to the overall risk exposure profile. In this mode, Acumen Risk reports whether the risk exposure is a result of preceding logic, the uncertainty of the activity itself, or risk events impacting the activity.
Risk Drivers Criticality
Criticality is a traditional risk metric reporting how often an activity (or group of activities) falls on the critical path. Criticality indicates how stable the critical path is as a result of risk and uncertainty. While it is a useful measure of critical path stability, it is not a sound measure for which activities most impact risk exposure. For this, use the Cost/Schedule Contribution Factor.
To view risk driver criticality, select .
Example of a Detailed Risk Driver Chart
Example of a Summarized Risk Driver Chart
The Risk Drivers chart displays duration in days by default; however, you can display the duration in hours and vice versa by changing the display settings on the S1 // Projects tab ().
P-Value Determination in Risk Drivers
To provide a risk driver Pxx value, Acumen looks at the 1% of iterations centered at the requested P-value and averages the driver contributions from those iterations.
Risk Drivers Bar Segment Limit
Use the TornadoSegmentThreshold setting in the Fuse.exe.config file to specify the number of bar segments that Acumen will display in the Risk Drivers chart. The setting defaults to 100. When the number of segments in a bar in the risk drivers chart exceeds the threshold, Acumen summarizes the bar as a single segment. The tool tip for the bar explains that the bar is summarized.
Copy to Clipboard
- Screen Image: Use this option to copy the current image to the clipboard (WYSIWYG).
- Extended Image: Use this option to copy all of the bar rows and data to the clipboard even if some of it is not visible due to scrolling.
Context Menu in Risk Drivers
To provide better context in the Risk Drivers chart, hover your cursor over data and right-click Go to <Activity Id>. The chart navigates to the activity and displays the risk drivers on the screen.