Tamara Project risk analysis software
Tamara project risk analysis software allows you to assess the cost and schedule risks that impact your project. Using Tamara, you can answer questions like:
- What is the probability of coming under budget and delivering before the due date?
- What are realistic budgets and delivery dates?
- What are the key risks that threaten the project’s objectives?
Features
- NEW: Spreadsheet control, fully equipped with advanced risk modeling tools
- Importing from a Primavera or MS Project master schedule file
- Check of suitability of master schedule for risk modeling
- One click updating against master schedule
- Ability to describe uncertainty in task durations
- Monte Carlo simulation of the schedule with unlimited number of samples
- Manual selection of random number generator seed
- Reporting of results as cumulative ascending and descending, histogram and Pareto plots, as well as statistics
- Analysis for start, duration and finish of any task or group of tasks
- Tornado sensitivity analysis plot
- Stochastic Gantt chart
- Report designer wizard to create and save your own report templates
- Report print out to PDF, Excel, Word and various image file formats
- Example models and help file tutorial
- Integrated cost modeling
- A wide range of capabilities for including risk events into the schedule
- Risk of a delay to a task
- Uncertainty of fixed and variable costs
- Risk of an additional cost
- Risk of extra work (sometimes called probabilistic branching)
- Repetitive risk events (like strikes or storms)
- Ability to define risks once that apply to repeated actions
- Productivity uncertainty (like poor contractor performance)
- Risk of work interruption (like site shutdown)
- Intuitive correlation
- Integration with other risk tools
A full description of these features can be found here.
Download brochure Learn more about our new spreadsheet featureWhat makes a good project risk software tool?
We created Tamara because other project risk software may look good, but in the real world they simply do not allow you to evaluate project risk accurately. Tamara is different. There are a number of questions you should ask to make the right choice of project risk software. Click on the button below to download an honest list of things you should consider when investing in a project risk analysis software tool.
Free webinar
In this webinar David Vose, a recognized expert in the field of risk analysis, explains the basics of project risk analysis.
Watch webinar
Download FREE 15-day Tamara trial
Download copyHow Tamara works
To begin, the user imports a Primavera or Microsoft Project model into Tamara. During import, Tamara performs a health check on the model, providing a set of scores on the schedule's quality and highlighting any specific issues. Uncertainty about the time and cost of completing each task is then added by considering uncertainty in the task scope and the rate of progress in achieving the work. Risk events can also be added that would delay a task, the whole project, part of a project, require extra work to be done, etc. Tamara stores all this information with a copy of the original project schedule in a special file format. No changes are made to the original Primavera or Microsoft Project file, but when the project plan is updated, Tamara can update its own file with a single mouse click and adapt the risk and uncertainty information accordingly.
Clicking the results tab then displays a range of risk analysis graphs and statistics for cost and time. Tamara simulates so fast there is no need for a ‘run simulation’ button. The user can then view probability distributions in histogram or cumulative form for the cost, duration, start or finish date of any project component. Tornado charts also show which factors are driving the uncertainty in those measures.
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Schedule nowKey features
Simulation speed
Tamara is the World’s fastest project risk analysis simulation tool. From the beginning of its development, the greatest possible simulation speed was a primary goal so that it became practical to run a risk analysis on very large models, relieving the project team of the necessity of having one model for risk analysis and another for project management.
Rich ability to model risk events and uncertainty
During the developing of Tamara, we worked closely with around a dozen project risk and planning experts. They challenged us with a large set of examples of risks that they were never able to adequately describe in other project risk tools, and we set about creating a product that met these challenges yet remained easy to use.
Solving the correlation problem
A key reason that projects fail to meet their deadline and budget goals, even when a project risk analysis has been performed, is 'correlation', a statistical term that can be summarized as 'when things go wrong in one place, they are more likely to go wrong in other places too'. Historically, 'correlation' has been modeled using correlation matrices, which are both impractical to use for schedules larger than twenty or so tasks, and very unintuitive – which is why correlation has been largely ignored in project risk analysis with the result that the riskiness of projects were grossly underestimated. Tamara fixes that.
Combining schedule planning and spreadsheets in one tool
Users now have almost unlimited freedom to describe the uncertainty around task durations and costs, the frequency and magnitude of risks and any inter-dependencies that can be of importance for a particular analysis. All this can now be modeled in a familiar, user-friendly and powerful spreadsheet environment, enriched by a full set of risk analysis tools that exist in ModelRisk, including 136 different probability distributions, 34 time series models, 14 correlation models and many other specialist modeling tools.
Fast, beautifully presented reports
Project management teams often have to produce updated reports very regularly, or at very short notice, which can be very time-consuming, stressful and produce errors. Tamara has a unique report template feature that allows the user to design several reports (for example, an executive summary, a senior management report, and a detailed report for the project manager – click the links for examples) for a project. These reports can then be generated in PDF form in a process that takes perhaps a minute from updating the schedule to sending the reports out.
More features
- World’s fastest project risk assessment tool
- Can handle really large project schedules
- Imports from Microsoft Project and Primavera P3 or P6
- Integrated cost and schedule risk analysis
- Richest capability for cost and duration modeling risk and uncertainty
- Additional work risk events (probabilistic branching)
- Site shutdown risk events
- Repeatable, in/dependent risk events
- Replicated risk events
- Calendar related risks
- Expense uncertainty
- Cost rate uncertainty
- Scope uncertainty
- Productivity risk
- One click updating against the baseline schedule
- Suitability testing and scoring for imported schedules
- Intuitive and easy to use correlation method (no need for correlation coefficients)
- Fast uncertainty assignment using grouping, CBS and WBS
- Widest range of graphical reports
- Advanced, customizable sensitivity analysis
- Sophisticated tools for creating tailored project risk reports
- Report templates for instant updates of your risk analysis
- Spreadsheet control which makes it possible to build risk analysis models that are driven by the results of the project risk analysis, all directly in Tamara
- Ability to link to ModelRisk to build financial risk analysis of the project
- Random sampling Gantt chart showing critical path
- Stochastic Gantt chart showing start and finish ranges
- In-depth help file and example models with full explanations
- Control of the number of CPUs used, number of Monte Carlo samples and generator seed
Highlight feature: Simulation speed
We designed Tamara to be able to work with schedules of essentially any size. It has been tested on real project plans of up to 50,000 tasks. To put that into perspective, a Gantt chart printout of such a schedule would be as tall as a 100-storey building! But being able to load such a huge schedule isn’t enough – it also has to run a Monte Carlo simulation in a reasonable time. So the Tamara simulation engine is fast – insanely fast! So fast, that for most schedules (50-300 or so tasks), the results appear in a fraction of a second. Even for a 34,000 task project it returns the results of 5,000 samples in less than ten minutes. Tamara, for example, simulates 800 times faster than @RISK for Microsoft Project. Again, to give that number some perspective, a thoroughbred racing horse is about 800 times faster than a slug. If your time is valuable, or if you ever need an update straight away, then Tamara will be a joy and a relief to work with.
