PPMP20012 Tute 4,5, 6 & 7 2
PPMP 20012:
Tutorial 4, 5, 6 & 7
Essay Assessment
Your task is to write a 2000 word essay describing how the contents in the following:
• SEBoK http:
www.sebokwiki.org
• Kerzner (2013)
• AS/NZS 15288:2013 Systems engineering – Systems life cycle processes
• Full Final Report from the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling
• Chapter 5: Overarching Failures of Management of the Chief Counsel’s report from the National Commission on the BP
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling
• Other material as you feel appropriate
Address and explain the relevance of systems thinking to a project and an organisation by using the theories and ideas related to:
• General systems management
• Organisational structures, forms and culture
• Engineering risk, risk management,
• Portfolio alignment
• Business value
• Portfolio management process cycle
• Organisational maturity.
You should illustrate your arguments by identifying what different system thinking tools and techniques might aid project managers
to solve problems, such as what occu
ed with Texas City and Deepwater Horizon
• Due: Week 9
http:
www.sebokwiki.org
Make sure you write in good English
• Although you might think that you should not be marked down due to
poor English the reality is that you will lose marks because you can’t
e understood
• Making sure that your sentences make sense is important
• That each sentence is related to the previous one and they comprise
a paragraph that makes sense is very important
• Then making sure that the essay or report has the right structure of
introduction, body, conclusion and everything flows seamlessly is
important
• Remember you need to show at AQF Level 8 that you can
communicate
Short Sentences & Don’t fall in love with your words!
• The maximum length of any sentence should be twenty words! The
desired length is ten words!
• When you write something you put a little of yourself into what you’ve
written.
• It is easy to allow the passion to overwhelm the reality!
• Regardless of how good you think a sentence is don’t keep it if it no
longer makes sense in the context of the paragraph, and overall
message of the assignment.
• When you write something you put a little of yourself into what you’ve
written.
• It is easy to allow the passion to overwhelm the reality!
• Regardless of how good you think a sentence is don’t keep it if it no
longer makes sense in the context of the paragraph, and overall
message of the assignment.
Proof Reading
• Two thirds of the effort of completing an essay or report is proof reading.
• So if the assignment took you six hours to write in the first place then you
should allocate another twelve hours to make sure it is right.
• In other words your whole assignment will take eighteen hours!
• For example, it is easy to write long sentences (those over twenty words) in
the first draft writing of your assignment. You will then need to review each
sentence at the proof reading stage and ask yourself.
– Is it related to the previous sentence?
– Does it allow the flow to the next?
– Does it build the message that I wish to impart?
– Does it contain unnecessary and emotive words?
– Does it stick to the facts?
– Are the facts referenced?
– Plus many more questions that will require you to distance yourself from
what you have written and look at the assignment though dispassionate
eyes.
Structure
• Each topic should start with an introduction sentence.
Consist of evidence and examples that are based on
facts and referenced.
• Each topic should link together to build an argument that
is emphasised in the introduction and reiterated in the
conclusion.
• If you don’t know what this structure is before you write
your essay then you will struggle to write a good essay!
• What you will do is start and drift. So that by the
conclusion you are writing about something that is
completely different to what you started with!
Essay Structure
• 2000 words (+/- 10%)
– Introduction (~200 words)
• Put forward your central argument for the essay
• Provide the setting for the topics
– Topics (~1600 words)
• Relevance of systems thinking to a project and an organisation related to
general systems management, organisational structures, forms and culture,
Portfolio alignment, business value, portfolio management process cycle,
organisational maturity.
• Provide evidence and examples and in text citations
– Conclusions (~200 words)
• Bring all the topics together to the central argument
• Bookend to the Introduction
– References
• Harvard
Case Study Discussion
• BP Deep Water Horizon
– Chief Counsel’s Report – Chapter 5
8
Chief Counsel’s Report
• Chapter 5 (p. 225)
– At Least Seven Factors:
1.Ineffective Leadership at Critical Times
2.Ineffective Communication and Siloing of Information
3.Failure to Provide Timely Procedures
4.Poor Training and Supervision of Employees
5.Ineffective Management and Oversight of Contractors
6.Inadequate Use of Technology
7.Failure to Appropriately Analyse and Appreciate Risk
• Ultimately, the companies placed undue reliance on
timely intervention and human judgment in light of their
failure to provide individuals with the information, tools,
and training necessary to be effective.
9
Chief Counsel’s Report –
Leadership (pp XXXXXXXXXX)
• BP‘s operating management system (OMS) is
leadership.
– operating leaders [who] are
• competent,
• exhibit visible,
• purposeful and
• systematic leadership and
• are respected by the organizations they lead.
– operating leaders create and support clear delegation and
accountability.
• Reality
– conflict between managers and confusion about who was
accountable for critical decisions
10
Chief Counsel’s Report –
Communication (pp XXXXXXXXXX)
• Inadequate communication and excessive
compartmentalization of information.
• When faced with anomalous data, decision
makers often failed to seek counsel from others
with expertise and instead made decisions based
on incomplete information.
11
Chief Counsel’s Report –
Communication (pp XXXXXXXXXX)
• Inadequate communication and excessive
compartmentalization of information.
• When faced with anomalous data, decision
makers often failed to seek counsel from others
with expertise and instead made decisions based
on incomplete information.
12
Chief Counsel’s Report –
Information Compartmentalisation
(pp. 228)
• Information about drilling at Macondo was
compartmentalized both within and between
companies.
• BP onshore engineering team was aware of risks
with the Macondo job but failed to communicate
those risks to its own employees on the rig or the
contractor personnel who might have helped
mitigate those risks.
13
Chief Counsel’s Report –
Experts and Calling Shore
(pp XXXXXXXXXX)
• Inability to use experts effectively.
• BP did not provide adequate guidance on when staff on the
ig should consult onshore personnel.
• After April 20th incident, a communications plan ― was not
well written. BP employee poked fun at its ― weird
drawings with boxes & a
ows.
• Well site leaders never contacted BP onshore personnel to
discuss their inability to bleed off drill pipe pressure during
the negative pressure test. They did not seek a second
opinion.
• Failing to make clear to well site leaders that they must call
ack to shore when confronted with unexpected results on a
critical test.
14
Chief Counsel’s Report –
Sharing Lessons Learned
(pp XXXXXXXXXX)
• Transocean failed to communicate to BP and its
ig crew lessons learned from a similar near miss
on one of its rigs in the North Sea four months
prior.
• No evidence the rig crew on the night of April 20
followed any of the five steps mandated by the
advisory.
• Compartmentalization of information
15
Chief Counsel’s Report –
Procedures (pp XXXXXXXXXX)
• Failure to provide well site leaders and the rig crew with
clear, detailed, and timely procedures.
• Once the well site leaders and rig crew did receive the
temporary abandonment procedures, they had precious little
time to digest and understand them.
• Just in time delivery of well plans.
• What is my authority? With the separation of engineering
and operations I do not know what I can and can‘t do. The
operation is not going to succeed if we continue in this
manner.
• We‘ve both [been] in Brian‘s position before. The same
goes for him. We need to remind him that this is a great
learning opportunity, it will be over soon, and that the same
issues – or worse – exist anywhere else.
16
Chief Counsel’s Report –
Employees (pp XXXXXXXXXX)
• Success in oil and gas exploration depends on effective
management of employees.
• Poor job of managing staffing and work assignments.
• Significant gaps in supervision and oversight.
• It does not appear that BP undertook any significant effort to
assure that Kaluza was qualified for the tasks he would be
overseeing at Macondo.
• Inadequate training set employees up for failure in the face
of events outside their expertise and experience.
• It is imperative that companies train and drill for emergency
situations precisely because they occur so rarely.
17
Chief Counsel’s Report –
Contractors (pp XXXXXXXXXX)
• At one point in time, operators owned their own oil rigs and directly employed the
people who worked on them.
• While the operator-contractor-subcontractor relationship can be beneficial in
many ways, it also creates the potential for miscommunication and
misunderstanding.
• The operator is best positioned to understand the big picture and how decisions
and issues regarding one aspect of the well might affect decisions and issues
egarding another.
• BP, like most offshore operators, relied heavily on its contractors to advise its
engineers regarding important decisions. But BP did not adequately supervise its
Macondo contractors.
• The converse problem was that many of BP‘s contractors were unduly deferential
toward BP‘s design decisions.
• In the absence of a clearly defined