At the Project Management Institute Asia Pacific conference in Manila, we presented a real options framework for project management. The topic was a bit heavy for one hour, but we think the audience appreciated that it was practical. At the end we asked the audience if they would be able to apply for it in their projects 20% said yes, 27% maybe, and the rest said no; there were about 40 people in the audience. During the questions session, there were some brilliant thought-provoking questions that we had not considered. Inspired by this, we decided to follow up and try to build new knowledge together with other project managers.

We plan to answer the following three key questions:

• How can the “abandon” option be rebranded to have a positive -instead of negative- connation if a project has to terminate earlier than planned?
• How can the real options framework be used in post-project reviews or post-mortems to quantitatively assess past decisions, even if the framework wasn’t used at the time?
• How can the real options framework be used for quantifying non-financial decisions?

We are thinking of collecting a group of 8 to 12 professional project managers and spending a total of 2 ½ hours per topic over a 4-week period. The outcome would be a useful guide that answers each question, separately.

If any (or all) of these topics spark your interest, stay tuned and keep your eyes open for our invitation. In the meantime, we’d love to hear your thoughts!