Quantifying Project Characteristics Related to Uncertainty

Uncertainty is an important but difficult to quantify challenge for project managers. Despite this, some project characteristics associated with uncertainty are quantifiable and can provide project managers with clues to the amount of uncertainty in a project. This article shows how the following project characteristics can be quantified: (1) interdependencies among activities, (2) limited information about activity durations, and (3) unfamiliarity and variety in project work. Data from two example projects are used to demonstrate the calculation and interpretation of the resulting three uncertainty descriptors.