What Is a Contingency Profile?

Contingency profiles are simply generic formulas that add a specified risk buffer to a project’s estimated schedule, cost, effort, and quality values.  Once defined by the Back Office administrator, contingency profiles can be made available to Estimation Service users via the Contingency Dashboard or deactivated if they are no longer needed.

Because they are reusable, Contingency profiles help standardize the calculation of management reserve across your portfolio.  Different profiles can be tailored for use with various project or contract types.  For example, fixed price contracts usually require more management reserve than in-house maintenance releases or time-and-materials contracts.  Large, high-profile projects are riskier than tiny, ad hoc projects.  Contingency profiles help estimators calculate appropriate levels of risk protection for each project.

SLIM-Collaborate offers two types of Contingency profiles:

      Target Probability profiles use Monte Carlo simulation to create a probability distribution of potential outcomes, allowing estimators to choose higher assurance (risk buffered) “commit-to” values for various management metrics.  They are most appropriate when you want to scale management reserve to estimation uncertainty.

      Fixed Percentage profiles add a fixed buffer (example, 20% on effort, 10% on schedule) to an existing estimate. They are most appropriate when you want calculate management reserve based on project/contract type or corporate policy.