The Critical Risk Path: A New Way To Evaluate And Manage Project Risk

Source: 2004 APICS International Conference Proceedings.
Copyright © APICS—The Association For Operations Management. Used by permission.

The critical risk path is a method for quantifying risk within a project. It is a straightforward visual technique for identifying and monitoring the riskiest tasks during the life of the project. Where the critical path represents the longest path through the project, predicting the total duration of the project, the critical risk path identifies individual tasks that will require a greater level of monitoring and control. It is these tasks—the high-risk tasks—that take the longest amount of time and can undermine project success. One of the stated purposes of the critical path is to indicate to the project manager which tasks need more monitoring and possibly more control. The critical risk path serves the same function but focuses on the riskiest tasks—not just the tasks estimated to take the longest time.

Every seasoned project manager intuitively knows that they improve their success rate by focusing on the high-risk tasks. The critical risk path formalizes that intuition and communicates the intention to the rest of the project participants, internal and external.

About The Author
Karen Vecchio is a 20-year project management veteran that developed this new approach to managing project risk.