Books – Global Risk Guard. Resources for Risk Professionals

[ReviewAZON asin=”1563473836″]Risk management is an important skill that can be applied to a wide variety of projects. In an era of downsizing, consolidation, shrinking budgets, increasing technological sophistication, and shorter development times, risk management can provide valuable insights to help key project personnel plan for risks, alert them of potential risk issues, analyze these issues, and develop, implement, and monitor plans to address the issues long before the issues surface as problems and adversely project cost, performance, and schedule.

This important new text defines the steps to effective risk management and helps the reader create a viable risk management process and implement it on their specific project. It will also allow you to better evaluate an existing risk management process, find some of the shortfalls, and develop and implement needed enhancements.

The book helps fill a void that exists in the project risk management literature on desirable risk management process characteristics and considerations for tailoring and implementing the process on a particular project. The material illustrates attributes and practices of sound risk management that can readily be used by both project management and technical practitioners, as well as others that are less familiar with the subject.

Conrow presents more than 200 lessons learned and clearly stated tips that will help you successfully implement risk management, including things to do and traps to avoid, taken from his extensive experience working on a wide variety of projects over 20 years. This includes work performed as a risk management specialist and consultant on Air Force, Army, Navy, DoD, NASA, other government organization, and commercial projects; on hardware-intensive, software-intensive, and mixed projects, with life cycle dollar ranges from several million dollars to many billion dollars. Examples of erroneous risk management practices are given, along with insights to help the reader understand why the practice is flawed and improve their ability to detect other issues that may also be problematic.

Includes 200+ Tips for Sound Project Risk Management

Author: Dr. Edmund H. Conrow CMC, CPCM, PMP, email info@risk-services.com.[/ReviewAZON]

Books

January 14 GRG

Dynamic Scheduling with Microsoft Office Project 2007: The Book by and for Professionals

[ReviewAZON asin=”1932159878″]Designed for the busy, practicing project manager, Dynamic Scheduling With Microsoft Office Project 2007 will help you get up to speed quickly with Project 2007 and enable you to create effective schedules more efficiently. Through the use of helpful screen shots, hands-on exercises, illustrations, and review questions, this guide instructs you on how to build dynamic schedules that will allow you to explore what-if scenarios and dramatically decrease the time you spend making static scheduling changes.

Key Features:

–Fully aligned with the PMBOK Guide – Third Edition, published by Project Management Institute
–Captures the best practices and insights gained from thousands of real-life schedules and years of consulting and training project managers across all industries
–Includes two new chapters on Enterprise Project Management and Earned Value Management
— WAV offers downloadable exercise files, certified real-life schedules, filters to check your own project and a solutions manual for college professors available from the Web Added Value Download Resource Center at jrosspub.com[/ReviewAZON]

Books

January 14 GRG

Decisions Involving Uncertainty : An @RISK Tutorial for the Petroleum Industry

[ReviewAZON asin=”1893281027″]A great extension of Dr. Murtha’s highly successful seminars on the use of @RISK in the petroleum industry. You start with 2 chapters to get up to speed on the philosophy of risk analysis and the requisite principles in probability, statistics, and Monte Carlo simulation. Following are the basic steps you’d take to actually build, run, and interpret results for a real risk analysis model in @RISK. To make it as hands-on as possible, Dr. Murtha includes lots of petroleum examples – an accompanying CD includes all these examples pre-built in Excel worksheets. Volumetric reserves, exponential decline, porosity and water saturation, waterflood prospect, and competitive bidding are some of the examples. This is a rare offering in that you’ll learn about the concepts of risk analysis while also getting some very solid hands-on experience with risk analysis modelling in @RISK 4.0. A trial version of @RISK 4.0 is also included![/ReviewAZON]

Books

January 14 GRG

Statistical Distributions

[ReviewAZON asin=”0471371246″]From the reviews:

“Concise and useful summaries of the salient facts and formulas relating to [various] distributions.” -Journal of the American Statistical Association

“A worthwhile reference.” -Journal of Quality Technology

Since the previous edition of this popular guide to the most commonly used statistical distributions was published in 1993, statistical methods have found many new applications in science, medicine, engineering, business/finance, and the social sciences. To keep pace with these developments and to highlight the growing influence of statistical software and data management techniques, this new edition is now thoroughly updated and revised. Through clear, concise, easy-to-follow presentations, the authors discuss the key facts and formulas for 40 major probability distributions, fine-tune all existing material, and continue to offer ready access to vital information gleaned from hard-to-find places across the literature. Highly useful both as an introduction to basic principles and as a quick reference guide, Statistical Distributions, Third Edition:
* Presents the 40 distributions in alphabetical order
* Provides all key formulas for each distribution
* Adds a new chapter on the Empirical Distribution Function
* Expands the Weibull Distribution to cover the 3 and 5 parameter versions
* Incorporates diagrams and tables illustrating the characteristics of each distribution
* Discusses the types of application for which distributions are used
* Features references to relevant software packages[/ReviewAZON]

Books

January 14 GRG

Simulation Modeling Using @RISK: Updated for Version 4

[ReviewAZON asin=”053438059X”]With its understandable explanations of Monte Carlo and step-by-step instructions for Microsoft Excel, Lotus, and @Risk software, this text/software package offers both the instruction and the practice students need to begin solving complex business problems. It is designed for use as the primary learning tool in a short business simulation course (for advanced undergraduate and MBA students), or as a supplement to courses in investments, corporate finance, management science, marketing strategy, operations management, and actuarial science.[/ReviewAZON]

Books

January 14 GRG

Simulation Modeling and Analysis

[ReviewAZON asin=”0071255192″]This authoritative, comprehensive and thoroughly revised text is designed for a one term or two quarter course in simulation taught at the senior or graduate level. It is offered in departments of industrial engineering, business, computer science and operations research. New features include an innovative chapter on simulation of manufacturing systems and an up-to-date treatment of simulation software and animation, with definitive coverage of model validation, input probability distribution and analysis of simulation output data.[/ReviewAZON]

Books

January 14 GRG

Risk and Decision Analysis in Projects (Cases in project and program management series)

[ReviewAZON asin=”1880410281″]Is there anything more important to the success of a project than making good decisions? This skill is certainly at or near the top of the list. Yet, few of us have had formal training in decision making. Decision analysis is the discipline that helps people choose wisely under conditions of uncertainty. This book introduces risk and decision analysis applied to project management. Probability is the language of uncertainty. Fortunately, a few basic concepts in probability and statistics go a long way toward making better decisions. The evaluation calculations are straightforward, and many everyday problems can be solved with a handheld calculator. Schuyler also explains and demystifies key concepts and techniques, including expected value, optimal decision policy, decision trees, the value of information, Monte Carlo simulation, probabilistic techniques, modeling techniques, judgments and biases, utility and multi-criteria decisions, and stochastic variance.

Some of Schuyler’s tried-and-true tips include:

-The single-point estimate is almost always wrong, so that it is always better to express judgments as ranges. A probability distribution completely expresses someone’s judgment about the likelihood of values within the range.

-We often need a single-value cost or other assessment, and the expected value (mean) of the distribution is the only unbiased predictor. Expected value is the probability-weighted average, and this statistical idea is the cornerstone of decision analysis.

-Some decisions are easy, perhaps aided by quick decision tree calculations on the back of an envelope. Decision dilemmas typically involve risky outcomes, many factors, and the best alternatives having comparable value. We only need analysis sufficient to confidently identify the best alternative. As soon as you know what to do, stop the analysis!

-Be alert to ways to beneficially change project risks. We can often eliminate, avoid, transfer, or mitigate threats in some way. Get to know the people who make their living helping managers sidestep risk. They include insurance agents, partners, turnkey contractors, accountants, trainers, and safety personnel.[/ReviewAZON]

Books

January 14 GRG

Risk Analysis: A Quantitative Guide

[ReviewAZON asin=”0470512849″]Risk Analysis concerns itself with the quantification of risk, the modeling of identified risks and how to make decisions from those models. Quantitative risk analysis (QRA) using Monte Carlo simulation offers a powerful and precise method for dealing with the uncertainty and variability of a problem. By providing the building blocks the author guides the reader through the necessary steps to produce an accurate risk analysis model and offers general and specific techniques to cope with most modeling problems. A wide range of solved problems is used to illustrate these techniques and how they can be used together to solve otherwise complex problems.[/ReviewAZON]

Books

January 14 GRG

Probability Methods for Cost Uncertainty Analysis : A Systems Engineering Perspective

[ReviewAZON asin=”0824789660″]A careful blend of theory and practice, this book presents a comprehensive approach to assessing the impact of unplanned events on the cost of engineering complex systems. It illustrates how probability theory is applied to model, measure, and manage risk in the cost of a systems engineering project. The book contains numerous mathematical and professional anecdotes, case studies, results, observations, and interpretations that clarify the challenges in cost risk analysis. It includes references, equations, and illustrations, provides theoretical and applied exercises, and uses examples and case discussions derived from systems engineering projects to describe key concepts.[/ReviewAZON]

Books

January 14 GRG

Introduction to Risk Analysis: A Systematic Approach to Science-Based Decision Making

[ReviewAZON asin=”0865876967″]Written for safety and loss-control, environmental, and quality managers, this is the first comprehensive, integrated guide to developing a complete environmental risk analysis for regulated substances and processes. Unlike other books, Introduction to Risk Analysis looks at risk from a regulatory perspective, allowing both professionals in regulatory agencies concerned with risk_including OSHA, EPA, USDA, DOT, FDA, and state environmental agencies_and professionals in any agency-regulated industry to understand and implement the methods required for proper risk assessment.[/ReviewAZON]