One of the duties of a Back Office Administrator is to create and maintain one or more Contingency Profiles for use with the Contingency Dashboard in the Estimation service. A Contingency Profile is a preconfigured group of settings that allows estimators to calculate and add an appropriate amount of management reserve (additional schedule time, resources, or cost) to an existing estimate, bid, or work plan. Most estimates are based on most likely (or “expected”) performance. Working to a team’s known capability but committing to a higher assurance (risk buffered) outcome helps developers manage the risk of unanticipated scope creep, lower than expected productivity, or other challenges that cause projects to fall behind schedule or run over budget.
Examples of Contingency Profiles might include:
•80-80 Target Probability. Creates a Contingency Solution with enough risk buffer on schedule and cost to match the 80% assurance (probability) values for the estimate.
•10-20 Fixed Percentage. Creates a Contingency Solution that adds a 10% schedule ‘buffer’ and a 20% resource ‘buffer’ to the Current Solution.
Like the Trend, Template, and Configuration Set Management pages, the Contingency Profile Management page is accessible only to SLIM-Collaborate users with Back Office permissions in their default role. It is the Back Office administrator’s job to create one or more contingency profiles. Once created, a contingency profile can be made Active (making it available for selection on Contingency Dashboard charts and reports) or deactivated as needed.
To view the current list of Contingency Profiles defined for your site, select Back Office | Contingency Profiles from the SLIM-Collaborate menu. The profiles list is sortable and filterable and can be exported to CSV (comma separated variable) format for use with applications like Microsoft Excel.