[kplato] definitions of effort and risk

[bilbo]

On 21 Jun 2001, at 17:23, Jim Sabatke wrote:

> For the purposes of this project:
> 
> Effort is the amount of actual time (hours, weeks, minutes...) that a 
> given task requires for completion.
> 
> Risk, I'll have to think about that one as there are so many kinds of 
> risk in a project.  You CAN look at it as a quantifiable variance on effort.

What are we going to call the estimate for the time required to 
complete a task?

Do we need two (or more) attributes here?
Perhaps 'uncertainty' and 'risk'. 
Uncertainty being your quantifiable variance - a plus/minus value 
applicable to the estimated work - because there should be no 
uncertainty on an actual. The uncertainty could be expressed as 
either a value (of the same units as the estimate), or as a 
percentage.
Risk could be considered as a confidence level (percentage) that 
the estimate is correct. I.e. if you're estimating a software project 
you could have a risk of 50%, but for a manufacturing project with 
an established production line then risk could be 99%. I think I'm 
meaning confidence rather than risk.

Am I way off base here? If so I'll shut up.

regards,
        Bill