Abstract: A method including, for a set of historical and/or ongoing business initiatives, determining key negative and positive performance factors by a computer from a structured taxonomy of negative and positive performance factors stored in a memory; modeling at least one of the performance factors for the ongoing business initiative or a new business initiative at at least one level of the hierarchical taxonomy. The key negative and positive performance factors are modeled based, at least partially, upon a likelihood of occurrence of the key negative performance factors during the business initiative, and based, at least partially, upon potential impact of the key performance factors on the business initiative. The method further includes providing the modeled performance factors in a report to a user, where the report identifies the modeled performance factors, and the potential impact of the at least one modeled performance factor.