This session should probably be shorter than the first session, because students are now already familiar with the simulations and won't be surprised by the unexpected events in the scenario. It's best to allow time to play each scenario, B, C and F, one or two times. These scenarios will be more challenging for students than scenario A, so students may want to play longer, in order to try to master the new challenge.

The instructor has some control over how surprised students are likely to be by the staff, crises in Scenario B and the competitor announcements in Scenario C, and the many sources of uncertainty in Scenario F. For example, situation the simulation within a course topic explicitly called something like "Managing Risk and Uncertainty" can obviously forewarn the students. Even without complete surprise, the simulation will be effective. The situation in the simulation will not be much different than the situation facing a real project manager. He or she knows to expect something unexpected but doesn't know what it might be.

Before beginning, suggest some questions that guide student thinking in the direction of managing risk and uncertainty but that do give away too much.

Submission

After playing the simulation, students will generate a short debrief summary that responds the following assignment questions:

1. What's different about the project context in this scenario?
2. In this scenario, how have causal relationships been affected or changed? Why have they changed?
3. What strategies did you use to deal with this scenario? What worked? What didn't? Were you able to complete the project successfully?
4. Having dealt now with different project scenarios, how would you revise your project management advice? If so, how?

Simulation Scenario B: Project has staffing crisis mid-project. Project will lose up to 3 staff members and be unable to hire for 2 weeks.

Senior management expects you to release a new printer which will upstage the competitor's expected new printer announcement. The target schedule is shortened to allow you to ramp up manufacturing and marketing soon enough to pre-empt the competitor announcement with an announcement of your own. The budget will support a cost structure that permits a profit margin which is slightly better than the current printer's margin. Your own analysis of the work required, and subsequent work breakdown structure has led to you conclude that these targets are difficult but achievable. Market intelligence gathered on the competitor's plans is considered reliable, so the target specs for your new printer, required to upstage your competitor's new printer, are reasonably well defined/understood, and expected to remain stable throughout the project. Comparatively, you are pleased that your project is reasonably staffed because other Project Managers are struggling to complete their work with limited resources.

Scenario Point Distribution of Scenario B

	Target	Points for Meeting Target	Points for Exceeding Target	Total Points
Project Scope		175	100	275
Project Schedule		175	100	275
Project Resources		250	100	350
Team Process		100	n/a	100
Total Points	1000

Simulation Scenario C: Competitor issues surprise announcement mid-project. Schedule target will move up and points for schedule will increase.

Senior management expects you to release a new printer which will allow you to upstage the competitor's expected new printer announcement. The target schedule is shortened to allow you to ramp up manufacturing and marketing soon enough to pre-empt the competitor announcement with an announcement of your own. The budget will support a cost structure that permits a printer profit margin which is slightly better than that of the current printer. Your own analysis of the work required, and subsequent work breakdown structure has led you to conclude that these targets are difficult but achievable. You're concerned, however, that the market intelligence gathered about your competitor's plans might not be reliable. Management has committed to providing stable access to resources during the project.

Scenario Point Distribution of Scenario C

	Target	Points for Meeting Target	Points for Exceeding Target	Total Points
Project Scope		200	100	300
Project Schedule		200	100	300
Project Resources		200	100	300
Team Process		100	n/a	100
Total Points Earned	1000

Simulation Scenario F: Chaotic scenario in which students encounter multiple unanticipated events. Use of prototypes is key to project success.

Senior management expects you to release a new printer that contains an advanced feature involving new technology. This new technology exists but it is in a nascent state and is still in flux. Your R&D team is working on refining it, but there's still a lot you don't know about it. To make matters more complicated, you think your main competitor might also be working on incorporating this technology into their new offering, though your market intelligence on exactly what they're doing is incomplete and probably unreliable. Schedule is tight on this project, since management would like to release the printer containing this advanced feature before the competition, but your budget is also substantially higher due to expected development complications. There are disagreements among the management team about the wisdom of placing such a big bet on a new technology, and the leaders of other projects are clamoring for resources for their own understaffed projects.