Agilis Delphi – Workshop process creates rapid alignment on project issues and risks

Submitted by Agilis

Impact

Communication, both between and within stakeholders and specialists, is required for all oil and gas projects and is always challenging. A project that can integrate knowledge and experience from all parties is more likely to be successful. Uncertainties are identified and mitigated sooner, unforeseen showstoppers can be avoided, cost and schedule risk is reduced and project value is increased.

The Delphi Workshop is a simple and rapid structured communication process to bring about stakeholder alignment. The benefits of the Delphi Workshop are speed (less than half a day) and effectiveness. Delphi Workshops for risk and issues identification have been used on a number of oil and gas projects. Impacts include; aggregating knowledge from a diverse range of participants, uncovering uncertainties and improving the understanding of existing risks. The workshop is also ideal for mixed cultural and language groups.

The Delphi Workshop process allows for unusual and nuanced issues to be fully expressed. Alternative workshop methods by comparison are cumbersome, time consuming, and require issues to be captured into fixed categories.

Description of Best Practice

 The Delphi Workshop is for 4 to 20 participants, and takes 2 to 3 hours. The Delphi Workshop method is a structured communication technique drawing on behavioural psychology. It allows for participants to express and discuss shared knowledge with low cognitive bias, independence of thought, and fewer collaborative communication roadblocks (such as dominance of the “home” culture, or participant fatigue/boredom).

A facilitator works through a list of approximately 300 generic keywords, developed to cover all aspects of project delivery. Each participant holds numbered cards. For each keyword, each participant “plays” a card, where low numbers indicate an insignificant issue, and high numbers a significant issue. For potentially significant issues, participants are guided through a simple process to agree and capture the issue.

The Delphi Workshop has been used successfully for safety, technical, schedule, cost, and commercial risk applications.