LESSON 6-4: Running a Risk Analysis
This tutorial describes:
• Run Risk Analysis dialog box
• Comprehensive, Fast, Normal and Custom Analysis 
• Advanced Options
• How to Run Risk Analysis

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1. Run Risk Analysis dialog box.
The Run Risk Analysis dialog box makes running a risk analysis fast and efficient. It offers three preconfigured levels of analysis. Fast Analysis, Normal Analysis, and Comprehensive Cnalysis. The options set for each level have been selected by risk managers and fine-tuned by application engineers to provide the most useful results with the fastest performance.
When you run a risk analysis, the application calculates the project schedule thousands of times, and then compiles a statistical breakdown of the results. This requires generating, tracking, and saving enormous amounts of data.

2. Comprehensive Analysis.
For instance, a Сomprehensive risk analysis can give you the probability of hitting specific start and finish dates for a project and any activity in it, both with and without risk response actions. It can also tell you which risks and impacted activities delay the project the longest or raise costs the most.

3. Fast Analysis.
Often however, all of that information is more than you need. For example, early in the Risk Management process, all you may want to know is what are the chances of your project finishing on time. The Fast Analysis doesn't require the application to track starts and finish dates for hundreds of activities over thousands of iterations.

4. Normal Analysis, Custom Analysis.
The Normal Analysis provides a level midway between fast and comprehensive, generates results for the project as a whole as well as project milestone and level of effort activities. This can be useful if project financing is tied to specific milestones. Use the options as configured or create a Custom Analysis.

5. Advanced Options.
Let's look at the options now. The Maximum Iterations field displays the maximum number of project simulations that will be performed during an analysis. The name of the field is slightly misleading, however. In this example, 1,000 is the maximum number of iterations. However, if the response context is set to pre and post-response, the number goes up to 2,000 as the analysis must be run with both pre-response and post-response risk impact values.
The next option is Select Analysis Results. Here you can choose Project Only, Project, Milestone, and Level of Effort Activities, or Project and All Activities. Risk removal impact is a secondary analysis in which each risk is individually excluded from a round of iterations. The results with each risk removed are then compared to the results with all risks included to calculate the impact of each risk on duration and cost.
Because each project risk requires its own round of iterations, risk removal impact analysis can multiply iterations and processing time many times over. The Proposed Risks option enables you to include proposed risks in the analysis. Use this option along with the Status column in the Risk Register to selectively analyze specific risks and response actions.
The Response Context option enables you to analyze pre-response risk impacts, post-response, or both. The analysis uses an algorithm to generate the random selection of risk probability and impact values during each iteration. A specific number can be used as the generator seed if analysis results must be duplicated. The Random Number Generator Seed is disabled when convergence is used.
Convergence is a process that monitors the risk analysis as it's in progress and discontinuous it after statistically valid results are achieved. A key indicator is calculated every 50 iterations. When successive indicators differ by less than 1.5, convergence is achieved, and analysis is discontinued. Adjust Convergence Threshold and Iteration Frequency to control conversion precision. Convergence can significantly reduce analysis time.
The Optimistic and Pessimistic Percentile fields are used to specify the optimistic and pessimistic bars on the Distribution Results histogram. The optimistic percentile includes results that were returned on only 10% of the analysis iterations. And the pessimistic percentile includes results returned on 90% of the iterations. You can change the optimistic and pessimistic percentile values as you wish.

6. Run Risk Analysis.
When you are finished selecting an analysis level or setting specific options, click Run Risk Analysis. If you are running a fast analysis, the analysis will finish quickly. If you're running a comprehensive analysis or an analysis of a very large project, the analysis will automatically run as a background service. And you'll receive a notification when it is completed.
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