Notes for Course Instructors and People Preparing Presentations
A number of people requested a copy of slides and case studies associated with
courses based on earlier editions of ‘How to Manage Project Opportunity and Risk’
(HMPOR), for a variety of reasons. The authors are very pleased Wiley have agreed
to make an updated version of this material available to anyone interested. Copyright
rests with the authors, but appropriate use acknowledging the source is agreed here.
The material is in three parts:
1. slides for course lectures/presentations,
2. text material for case studies,
3. slides for structuring case study discussions.
HMPOR targets a wide range of potential readers, as discussed in the forward.
Courses using HMPOR as a text and presentations using HMPOR as follow-on
background reading will obviously have to reflect the intended audience and the
course/presentation goals. The slides and cases provided are updated to reflect 2011
third edition changes from earlier versions evolved over a period of about 15 years.
The form provided here was developed for use on postgraduate (MSc and MBA)
courses involving 24 hours of contact time over 6 sessions (including 5 case study
discussions). Various summary versions have been used for 2 and 3 day courses for
practitioners, provided on an open course or in-house corporate course basis. In
addition, 1 day versions and 2 or 3 hour versions have been used in a corporate
context, usually for presentations tailored to very specific messages. Course
participants have included post graduate students with limited experience of projects
or risk management, people newly appointed to project risk management roles,
experienced risk or project managers, and senior managers, including board level
managers of major organizations.
Slides as a basis for course presentation and briefer presentations
You will obviously want to change some slides, putting your own name on the first
slide instead of the authors of HMPOR for example. Equally obvious, you will want
to drop some slides and add others.
Most of the diagrams and tables are drawn from the text, in some cases using only
part of the text tables. Almost all the text tables and figures are used in this way, but
there are some exceptions. For example, slide 99 provides a basis for discussing
alternative approaches to dependence, and the text tables and figures which elaborate
these points are not included, because our experience with courses based on earlier
editions of this book suggests this kind of technical detail is best left for reading by
course participants.
Some slides have been provided from the authors’ courses using earlier editions of
HMPOR because we think they will help to elaborate briefer treatment in the current
edition text. For example, slides 74-77 introduce the idea of portraying the same
information about uncertainty in terms of a table, a probability tree, a rectangular
histogram density function and a piece-wise linear cumulative probability
distributions, to clarify discrete and continuous variable interpretation of uncertainty
in general terms before moving on to the three value example used in the text.
Another example is slides starting with 107 allow a development of discounting
(NPV) models in more or less detail than the text, depending on the audience. It uses
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the examples discussed in the text, and subsequent reading of the text provides a
usefully different perspective.
The Transcon Case Study
The original version of the Transcon case study was developed for IBM UK in the
1990s for a culture change programme. It was used as a one part exercise, giving
participants one hour for syndicate work in groups of 4-8 to complete a relatively
unstructured version of the four part exercise provided with HMPOR. This was
followed by syndicate presentations to the whole course. A simplified version of the
HMPOR slides provided were then used for a comparative discussion of the syndicate
presentations and overall learning points linked to course goals.
The four part version of the Transcon case study allows a more structured
development of a number of the basic concepts introduced in chapters 1-4 and further
developed in more detail later. It is suitable for use at any stage of the development of
HMPOR concepts after the chapter 3 ideas. Up to one hour of syndicate work is
useful on each part, perhaps more on 1 and 4, less on 3.
Course instructors familiar with related discussion in HMPOR should find most of
the Transcon slide messages fairly obvious, but part 4 draws on a linked discussion in
chapter 3 of ‘Managing Project Risk and Uncertainty’ (Chapman and Ward, 2002,
John Wiley & Sons).
The Samdo Case Study
The Samdo case study is linked to the Ontario Hydro discussions in HMPOR, which
is in turn elaborated in chapter 12 of ‘Managing Project Risk and Uncertainty’
(Chapman and Ward, 2002, John Wiley & Sons). The Transcon case study assumes
the project has been structured in terms of basic components by Transcon’s
consultants, but the Samdo case study is about getting started with the structuring
process. This works best just after the HMPOR chapter 8 concepts have been covered,
perhaps between Transcon parts 2 and 3, although it has been used with some success
as an opening exercise for a Copenhagen IPMA (International Project Management
Association) advanced course aimed at trainers. Up to about an hour of syndicate
work is useful for the Samdo case. After syndicate presentations, the slides provided
can be used as a basis for syndicate presentation comparisons and linking overall
learning points to course goals.
We hope you find these case studies and all the slides a useful starting place, and
enjoy using our book.
Chris Chapman and Stephen Ward
December 2011
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