There are No Facts about the Future

"There are no facts about the future!" This is a favorite saying of noted risk authority Dr. David T. Hulett that sums it up pretty well for project managers. ^[1] Uncertainty is present in every project, every project being a unique assembly of resources and scope. Every project has its ending some time hence. Time displaces project outcomes from the initial estimates; time displacement introduces the opportunity for something not to go according to plan. Perhaps such an opportunity would actually have an upside advantage to the project, or perhaps not. Successful project managers are those quick to grasp the need for the means to evaluate uncertainty. Risk management is the process, but probability and statistics provide the mathematical underpinning for the quantitative analysis of project risk. Probability and statistics for project managers are the subjects of this chapter.