- Monday, April 15 -

INSTRUCTOR
Wayne Mackey
Principal
Product Development Consulting, Inc.

This workshop covers a proven approach to risk, drawing elements from many successful risk analysis, assessment, and management methods. The primary goals of this method are:

1. implementation simplicity
2. coverage of both the market (customer) value and company capability aspects of risk.

This highly visible method uses the best available data to form a comprehensive picture of risk. Once the risk is understood, quantitative methods are applied to rank the seriousness and probability of occurrence of failure. Predictive metrics and risk management planning are then applied to mitigate the risks. This approach has been successfully applied in Fortune 500 companies.

Specifically, you will learn the 3 critical pieces of the "Risk Continuum"

1. risk analysis, the consequences of failure. This helps determine where to focus resources. This is the customer value or market side of risk. It is especially important to take both business and technical risks into account.
2. risk assessment, determining the probability of failure. At this stage a standard must also be set, to determine the baseline or target value around which the probability of failure can be measured. If there is no target, there is no risk. A company’s capability to perform comes into play at this stage.
3. risk management, what to do about the risks.

In this interactive work session, you will learn to apply:

• Analysis of cost, schedule, quality and performance risks using a structured method
• Assessment of the pain associated with failure on any of the parameters identified in the analysis
• Management techniques to focus on the critical few risks and measure progress toward their mitigation

About the instructor
Wayne Mackey's expertise is grounded in over twenty years of hands-on management of large engineering, manufacturing, and procurement organizations. His management consulting is focused on product development, and he is especially effective in business strategy implementation, collaborative design, metrics and risk management. Mr. Mackey has been a Principal with Product Development Consulting, Inc. since 1997. Prior to joining PDC, he worked in the automotive, aerospace and high-tech industries for 20 years.

INSTRUCTOR
David G. Ullman
President
Robust Decisions, Inc.

Decisions made during the design process influence many business-critical outcomes: product cost and quality, manufacturing methods, and customers' opinions, among others. Based on the book "12 Steps for Robust Decisions," the tutorial outlines a strategy for effectively collaborating on the important decisions – a strategy that uses your intellectual resources to reach defensible conclusions while downplaying factors you can't control.

In a perfect world, when faced with an issue to resolve, you would know all alternatives and all the criteria needed to select the best one. However, there are imperfections in the real worlds of business and product development. You seldom know all the criteria, you never have enough knowledge, you can’t take the time to fully evaluate all the alternatives, and you cannot get everyone to agree. In fact, for most problems the information is inconsistent, incomplete, uncertain and evolving. These imperfections or uncertainties are ‘noises’ in the decision-making process.

In this workshop you will find out how to make robust decisions, decisions that are as insensitive as possible to the noises that exist in every product development and business issue.

About the instructor
Dr. Ullman has a unique history of teaching, research, and professional practice. Author of 12 Steps to Robust Decisions (2001) and The Mechanical Design Process (1997), he is also president of Robust Decisions Inc. (Corvalis OR). Prior to founding Robust Decisions Inc., he was founder and chief engineer for BikeE Corporation (world’s largest manufacturer of recumbent bikes) and Emeritus Professor of Mechanical Engineering Design at Oregon State University.

INSTRUCTOR
Gregory D. Githens, PMP, NPDP
Managing Partner
Catalyst Management Consulting

Risk management encourages proactive thinking: a "forward look into uncertainty." Risk management is one of the handful of high-leverage techniques that promote speed and agility. It is a key enabler of organizational agility and it fosters the balance of speed and quality, creativity, team communications, value hunting, and opportunity capture.

In this workshop, you will learn:

• How to predict where failure will occur
• Why good project risk management can remove 1/3 time off your schedule
• How to remove speed-bumps
• Why the team should do risk collaboratively and minimize use of checklists
• Why you should manage risks differently than issues
• Why technical risk is a special case of risk management, and why you need unique tools for technical risk
• How to apply risk response planning (risk acceptance, risk mitigation, risk transference, and risk avoidance).

By participating, you will receive new insights to get your team to proactively address risk and issues and create organizational agility.

About the Instructor
Greg Githens is the author of "How to Assess and Manage Risk in NPD Programs: A Team-Based Approach," Chapter 8 of the PDMA Toolbook of NPD published by Wiley in March 2002. He is also the author of "Portfolios, Pipelines, and Programs," Chapter 8 of Managing Multiple Projects: Planning, Scheduling, and Allocating Resources for Competitive Advantage, published by Marcel Dekker in January 2002. Greg is a member of the core team for the 2000 and 2004 rewrite of PMI’s ® A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge.

Supporting Organization:

Publication Sponsor:

BONUS!

Conference participants receive:

A FREE copy of Proactive Risk Management: Controlling Uncertainty in Product Development, the new book by Preston Smith and Guy Merritt! [Sample Chapter]

- PLUS -

Complimenatry one-year subscription to the MIT Sloan Management Review