Practical project and risk management, explained plainly.
55 in-depth guides for independent project managers and small teams. Everything is free to read, and nothing to download: the goal is to get you out of spreadsheets, not into more of them.
Start here
New to the discipline, or sharpening the basics? These three guides frame everything else in the library.
What Is Risk Management?
A plain-language introduction to managing uncertainty on projects: what risk is, why it matters, and how a small team can start doing it well.
Project FoundationsWhat Is Project Management?
A clear introduction to what projects are, what project managers do, and the core knowledge areas every small team should understand.
SchedulingProject Scheduling: How to Build a Schedule You Can Trust
A step-by-step guide to turning a work breakdown structure into a logical, realistic schedule: activities, durations, dependencies, calendars and baselines.
Browse by topic
10 topic areas that follow the project from first idea to closeout, with risk running through all of them.
Risk Management Fundamentals
The core ideas behind managing uncertainty: what risk is, how the process works, and how much risk is acceptable.
- What Is Risk Management?
- The Risk Management Process, Step by Step
- Risk vs. Issue: Knowing the Difference
- Risk Appetite, Tolerance and Thresholds
Risk Analysis & Response
Find, score, respond to and track risks, from brainstorming through Monte Carlo and contingency reserves.
- Risk Identification Techniques
- Qualitative Risk Analysis and the Probability-Impact Matrix
- Quantitative Risk Analysis: EMV, Sensitivity and Monte Carlo
- Risk Response Strategies: Avoid, Mitigate, Transfer, Accept
- + 2 more
Project Foundations
Starting right: life cycle, charter, complexity, stakeholders and scope.
- What Is Project Management?
- The Business Case: Justifying a Project Before You Start It
- The Project Life Cycle and Process Groups
- How to Write a Project Charter
- + 6 more
Scheduling
Building a schedule you can trust: logic, critical path, float and compression.
- Project Scheduling: How to Build a Schedule You Can Trust
- The Critical Path Method (CPM) Explained
- Float, Crashing and Fast-Tracking: Compressing a Schedule
Budget & Cost
Estimating, budgeting and measuring cost performance with earned value.
- Project Budgeting: From Estimates to a Cost Baseline
- Cost Estimating Methods and Best Practices
- Earned Value Management (EVM) Made Simple
Procurement & Contracts
Buying what the project needs: planning procurement, choosing contract types, selecting vendors and administering contracts to closeout.
- Procurement Planning: Deciding What to Buy, from Whom and How
- Contract Types: Fixed Price, Time and Materials, Cost-Reimbursable and Target Price
- Vendor Selection: Choosing a Seller Fairly and Defensibly
- Long-Lead Items: Planning Backward from the Need-By Date
- + 1 more
Quality & Resources
Getting the right people and building quality in: staffing, team development, quality planning and control.
- Quality Management: Building Quality In Instead of Inspecting It In
- Quality Planning and Control: Inspections, Testing and Acceptance
- Resource Management: Getting the Right People at the Right Time
- Staffing Plans and FTEs: Estimating People, Hours and Labor Cost
- + 2 more
Control & Communication
Keeping everyone informed and the project on track: communications, roles, change and status.
- How to Create a Project Communications Plan
- The RACI Matrix: Clarifying Roles and Responsibilities
- Change Control: Managing Project Changes Without Chaos
- Project Status Reporting and Monitoring Progress
- + 3 more
Closure & Learning
Finishing well and making the next project better.
- Project Closure: How to Finish a Project Properly
- Lessons Learned: Turning Experience into Better Projects
Using the Apps
Step-by-step training for putting these guides to work in the apps: RiskWindow, the Schedule App, the Budget App, Scenarios, and the project plan, execution and monitoring tabs.
- How the Apps Fit Together: A Tour of RiskWindowPM
- Your First Project Walkthrough: From Idea to Approved Charter
- Using RiskWindow: From First Brainstorm to Living Register
- Using the Schedule App: Building, Updating and Reporting on a Schedule
- + 5 more
Popular guides
The pages readers tend to open first.
How to Build and Maintain a Risk Register
What belongs in a risk register, how to write entries that can be acted on, and how to keep it alive through the whole project.
The Critical Path Method (CPM) Explained
What the critical path is, how to calculate it with a forward and backward pass, and how to use it to focus your attention where delays hurt most.
Earned Value Management (EVM) Made Simple
How earned value combines scope, schedule and cost into one set of measures: PV, EV, AC, variances, performance indices and forecasts, with a worked example.
Qualitative Risk Analysis and the Probability-Impact Matrix
How to score and rank risks with simple scales, build a 5-by-5 probability and impact matrix, and decide which risks deserve your attention.
How to Write a Project Charter
The project charter formally launches a project. Learn what it contains, who signs it, and how a one-to-two-page charter can prevent months of confusion.
Change Control: Managing Project Changes Without Chaos
How to evaluate, approve and track changes to scope, schedule and budget, with a simple process, a sample change request and tips for avoiding scope creep.
New: the Learning Center
Step-by-step training for each stage of a project, procedures, and fundamentals modules for every knowledge area, organized alongside these guides.
Ready to put it into practice?
RiskWindow and the RiskWindowPM Suite turn the ideas in these guides into working tools: risk, schedule, budget and project forms, all in your browser. Try them free for 30 days.