PMP Formula of the Week: Risky Task

August 24, 2015 Guest Authors Cisco, Cloudera, Featured, Professional Development, Project Management, Routing & Switching, Technology, Training in Business

You are in the Executing phase of your project. As project manager, you receive weekly status reports on work progress from team members. In reviewing their input, you are particularly interested in two tasks:

Task 89 has an EST (estimated start time) of 45 and a LST (late start time) of 58.
Task 101 has an EST of 64 and a LST of 51.

Which of these tasks is riskiest?

A. Task 89 is the riskiest.
B. Task 101 is the riskiest.
C. Risk cannot be determined based on the given information.
D. Both tasks are equally risky.

Reveal Answer

The correct answer is B.

One way to determine the riskiness of a task is to look at the float of the task. The formula for float is LST – EST (late start time minus early start time). A project with negative float is behind schedule.

Task 89 has 13 time units of positive float while task 101 has 13 time units of negative float, meaning that –task 101 is the riskier of the two tasks. If a way is not found to bring in this task, the project will finish late.

PMP Formula of the Week Series

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