Workshop Leader: Ellen Coopersmith, President, Decision Frameworks

Co-Instructors: Decision Frameworks Team

Ellen Coopersmith is an expert in decision quality and decision analysis implementation and its practical application in multiple industries. She consults, facilitates and trains organizations across the globe, utilizing her extensive experience in strategy development, scenario planning, decision framing, decision analysis, facilitation and value of information. An engineer by degree from The Colorado School of Mines, Ms. Coopersmith has specialized in decision analysis for the last 25 years. As of 2019, she’s trained over 7,000 professionals while assisting companies with both corporate and project level strategic decisions. Ms. Coopersmith is the president of Decision Frameworks, a decision quality enablement firm providing consulting, training and software around globally. She was the 2017 – 2018 president of the Society of Decision Professionals (SDP), is a published speaker on decision analysis, a Professional Engineer and SDP Fellow.

Abstract:

Framing and evaluating de-risking strategies is key to organizations across the globe. Whether in support of government research, high tech, pharmaceuticals, minerals or energy, technology advances have the potential to “change the game” but carry a variety of risks which need to be addressed prior to deployment. When this is the case, testing or piloting the technology is often required. Fortunately, there is an efficient framing and evaluation workflow extrapolated from the decision sciences which is specific to de-risking technology advances, spans industries and provides rapid insights from which to make decisions in this difficult realm.

This workshop will introduce the workflow and provide an opportunity to apply key aspects in an interactive cased-based manner. Takeaways will include the practical use of:

· An Uncertainty Table to feed the de-risking frame of alternatives

· A de-risking Strategy Table to clearly define alternative pilots or test strategies to consider

· An uncertainty reduction expert interview set of questions to help teams forecast the how much a given test or pilot will reduce key uncertainties

· Confidence plots to compare alternative test/pilot designs

Ellen M. Coopersmith, P.E.