RiskyProject Professional

Effective project management is not a matter of crossing your fingers and hoping for the best, but rather of planning for things that could go wrong and knowing in advance how you'll deal with them. RiskyProject Professional is an easy way to complete all aspects of project planning and tracking, including the analysis of and preparation for potential risks.

The program's interface isn't the most beautiful we've ever seen, but it's well-organized and easy to navigate. There are drop-down menus and toolbars across the top, while the program's major functions--Schedule, Risks, Analysis, Tracking, and Report--are arranged in tabs down the left side. There are multiple views within each, allowing users to view Gantt charts, resources, cash flow, risk matrices, and more. The risk management features are much more detailed than those we've seen in other project management programs; there's a risk register, risk assignment chart, and response plan, as well as risk analysis tools. The program is definitely designed for those who have some familiarity with project management--beginners will likely feel overwhelmed and confused by some of the features--but anyone with a background in project management should feel right at home. The program comes with an impressive PDF Getting Started guide that walks new users through each of RiskyProject's features, although we were a little disappointed that links within the program to a Help file and tutorials led only to broken Web pages. That aside, we think that RiskyProject Professional is a great choice for project managers who like to focus on what could go wrong and manage those risks.

RiskyProject Professional comes as a ZIP file but installs and uninstalls without issues. We recommend this program to all users.

Editors' note: This is a review of the full version of RiskyProject Professional 3.2. The trial version is limited to 30 days.