Identify the high-risk tasks   Examine those tasks that are most likely to take longer than expected, end beyond their finish dates, delay the start or finish of other tasks, or cause the project to finish late.

Click all of the following that apply:

• Show tasks with estimated durations to see the tasks that have information pending. Tasks with uncertain lengths contribute to uncertainty in determining the project end date.
• Show tasks with long durations to see the tasks for which schedule (schedule: The timing and sequence of tasks within a project. A schedule consists mainly of tasks, task dependencies, durations, constraints, and time-oriented project information.) or cost increases may have a significant impact on the project end date or total cost.
• Show the critical path to see the critical tasks (critical task: A task that must be completed on schedule for the project to finish on time. If a critical task is delayed, the project completion date might also be delayed. A series of critical tasks makes up a project's critical path.) that are at risk of slipping (slippage: The amount of time that a task has been delayed from its original baseline plan. The slippage is the difference between the scheduled start or finish date for a task and the baseline start or finish date.), which could delay the project end date.
• Show tasks with external dependencies to see which tasks might be delayed by tasks outside of your project, thus increasing the risk of missing the project end date.
• Review task constraints to see the tasks that are constrained and must start or finish on or near a specific date, and to see the tasks whose start and finish dates Project can't recalculate as the schedule changes.
• Check for tasks that are behind schedule to see those tasks for which the actual (actual: Information that shows what has actually occurred. For example, the actual start date for a task is the day that the task actually started.) progress lags behind the planned progress, which may cause the project end date to slip.

Identify the budget risks   View and handle those tasks that are over budget, likely to become over budget, or likely to cause the entire project to go over budget.

Click all of the following that apply:

• Review cost totals to check the overall status of your costs (cost: The total scheduled cost for a task, resource, or assignment, or for an entire project. This is sometimes referred to as the current cost. In Project, baseline costs are usually referred to as "budget.") per task, per resource, per assignment, or per project.
• Find costs that are over budget to see the tasks or assignments that exceed their budgeted costs, which could put your overall project budget at risk.
• View cost variances to compare the baseline costs for tasks, resources, or assignments with actual costs.
• Analyze costs by using PivotChart® and PivotTable® reports, within a project or across projects.

Identify the resource risks   Your project may be at risk if you are using resources that are highly specialized or only available through limited suppliers, if the resources are not being used efficiently, or if they are working on multiple projects.

Click all of the following that apply:

• Identify resources with specialized skills to see which resources have skills that might be difficult to replace.
• Identify materials with a single supplier to see which materials can delay the project if the supplier is unable to deliver on time.
• Check for overallocated or underallocated resources to review each resource's total amount of work to ensure that neither too much nor too little work has been assigned.
• Identify resource allocation problems across multiple projects to see which resources are working at or over their maximum availability (availability: Indicates when and how much of a resource's time can be scheduled for assigned work. Availability is determined by project and resource calendars, resource start and finish dates, or the level at which the resource is available for work.).

Define your risks   After you identify potential risks, you can use Microsoft Office Project Web Access 2003 to capture risk information so you can analyze the impact of risks if they occur.

• Create a new risk