Projects at Risk Analytics: Case Studies

The following case studies illustrate some of the ways you can use Projects at Risk Analytics:

He notices in the Risks list that for the Costs over Budget risk reason he has three at-risk projects, and for Billing over Funding, five at-risk projects. He is concerned because the Risks Trended chart indicates that the at-risk amount for these two risk reasons has been increasing each period. Because Costs over Budget is the largest risk amount, he selects that risk reason for further analysis and uses the Risk Comparisons chart to see which of his divisions has the largest risk amount and how the risk is trending over the past year.

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On the Projects at Risk tab, she notices that five projects have billing over funding. Concerned that these might be fixed price contracts, she selects the Billing over Funding risk reason for analysis and uses the Risk Comparisons chart to view trending for that risk reason by project type. As feared, she notices that four out of the five projects are fixed price contracts. Moving to the Amount at Risk by Reason chart, she breaks down the risk information by project manager. The table shows the project managers who are responsible for the fixed price contracts, how many at-risk projects they are responsible for, and the amount that is at risk. She sorts the table in order by amount at risk and exports the contents to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, so she can take it to a meeting of her project managers.

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Analysis Step	Action in Projects at Risk Analytics
An analyst responsible for researching and providing answers to questions from the divisional vice president for operations in California receives a request from the VP that he find out why they have outstanding balances due from some of their largest customers.	At the top of the tab, he selects the current year as the analysis period. In the Owning Org list, he clicks one or more times until the list displays the level 2 organizations. He then selects the California division to filter the analytics for that organization.
He notices, in the Risks Trended chart, that the at-risk amount for the Billing over Funding risk reason has been rising recently.	He selects Billing over Funding in the Risks list to focus the analytics on that risk reason.
He suspects that the customers with the outstanding balances may be involved in the at-risk amount for the Billing over Funding risk reason.	In the Amount at Risk by Attributes table, he right-clicks in the first column and clicks Customer on the shortcut menu to display a list of customers, along with the number of at-risk projects and total at-risk amount for each.
He sees that in fact the majority of the at-risk amount is attributable to the customers his VP is concerned about.	He clicks Customer under Additional Filters and selects those customers to focus the analytics on them.
At this point, he wants to identify the projects that have billed more than they have been funded and what the at-risk amount is for each.	He clicks Risk Analysis to display the Risk Analysis table. In the table, he right-clicks in the first column and selects Risk Level Project Name from the shortcut menu. The table displays a list of the risk-level projects for the selected customers. For each project, it displays total billing, total funding, and the resulting at-risk amount. Definition: Risk-level project A project at the level of the project structure at which Costpoint Analytics calculates risk. For a billing-based risk reason, Costpoint Analytics calculates risk for projects at the level of the project structure at which the billing formula resides (billing-level projects). For all other risk reasons, Costpoint Analytics calculates risk for projects at the level of the project structure at which the revenue formula resides (revenue-level projects).
The Risk Analysis table reveals that there are ten projects associated with large customers that are at risk because of billing over funding. He can now communicate his findings to the vice president for operations.	He right-clicks on the title bar of the Risk Analysis table and clicks Print on the shortcut menu. When the table appears in Microsoft Internet Explorer, he clicks Page on the toolbar, clicks Send Page by E-mail on the menu, and emails a copy of the table, with his notes, to the vice president.

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The previous period, she had five projects identified as at risk for the Costs over Budget risk reason, with a total at-risk amount of $15,000. Now she wants to confirm that her project managers are doing a better job of containing costs. To begin her analysis, she selects the Costs over Budget risk reason in the Risks list, and she selects her top-level project in the Top Level Project Name list. She then breaks down the at-risk amount by revenue-level project in the Amount at Risk by Attribute table to see if there are any projects at risk for the contract. She finds that in the current period she has two projects that have a risk reason of Costs over Budget for a total of $20,000. Next, she uses the Risk Comparisons chart to trend the at risk amounts by project manager to see which project managers have gotten costs under budget and which are still having problems with cost containment. The chart reveals that only one project manager has at-risk projects in the current period. Finally, she filters the analytics by that project manager to view the actual, target, and at-risk amounts for his at-risk projects in the Risk Analysis table, and she exports the table data to Microsoft Excel to send to the project manager.