My Ph.D. advisor, Peter Slater, and two of his colleagues published a technical book in 1998. They had 1,000 pages of material, so it appeared as a two-volume set. As with all books, the editing process was arduous. One of the last minute decisions was to switch from using the word “which” to “that.” My advisor remarked “that would be a which hunt.”
I’m very fortunate to have found a major company, McGraw-Hill, to publish my forthcoming book, Solving for Project Risk Management: Understanding the Critical Role of Uncertainty in Project Management. The last several months has been an educational journey. I had been working on my book on and off since 2014 and was close to finishing a manuscript for the book in 2019 when I decided I should start looking for a publisher. My colleague Doug Howarth had been working with an agent, so I contacted her. Even though she expressed some interest, we never signed a deal. My initial manuscript focused on defense and aerospace, so I tried submitting directly to a publisher that focused on that area, only to be rejected. I recalled that several years ago, another colleague, Bill Haseltine, was working with a publisher to produce a book on cost estimating, and he had asked me to write a chapter on risk. The project was never finished, but on remembering that Bill had a connection with a major publisher, I contact him. He got me in touch with his contact. One thing led to another, and I eventually had a phone call with an editor at McGraw-Hill. He was initially concerned about the narrow scope. After thinking about it, he asked me to prepare a proposal on a book with broader scope, which was accepted.
I signed a deal with McGraw-Hill in mid-March. I had six weeks to broaden the scope of my book, which required a major re-write. The timing could not have been more fortuitous, as my family decided to hunker down and stay home until mid-May because of the pandemic. It reminded me of my final push in graduate school to complete my dissertation. I was procrastinating in making final edits at the beginning of my last semester when an ice storm struck. I was stuck inside for a few days, which helped me focus and complete my Ph.D. thesis.
The re-write was a lot of work. I had to cut out some chapters altogether, including one on government risk policy, and half of a chapter that dealt with the high cost of government systems. I also had to do some research to see if my my research on risk for defense and aerospace programs would apply to all types of projects, such as roads, bridges, dams, etc. I found that it did, so while it was some work to add in examples from other industries, it was a natural fit. My editor provided feedback along the way, along with some high-level edits once I had submitted my manuscript. The publisher also changed the title. What had initially been Here Be Dragons: An Inside View of the Hidden Role of Financial Risk In National Security became Solving for Project Risk Management: Understanding the Critical Role of Uncertainty in Project Management. The initial title comes from a paper I wrote in 2010 titled “Here Be Dragons: Considering the Right Tail in Risk Management,” which is one of my most well-known to date. The reference is that on old maps, cartographers often depicted dragons and other monsters in uncharted territories, indicating the risk and uncertainty in the unknown.
Once my re-write was completed, my manuscript and supporting graphics and table files were sent to a copy editor, who provided detailed suggestions. There have been two passes in that process so far, and I’m nearing the end of the second time through the review of the completed manuscript. It seems every time I look at it, I find another typo. I have also had a couple of “that would be a which hunt” moments as part of this process. As my book is based on a series of papers I had written over the years, I had some inconsistencies in my use of dollar amounts for examples. As most projects typically cost in the millions of dollars (at a minimum), most of my examples were in the millions, but occasionally I put them in $ terms, so in one case I had use $10 million, and in another example I had used $10. In getting colleagues to look at the manuscript to get endorsements, someone pointed out to me that I had used the terms likelihood and probability interchangeably. In common informal usage of the terms, they are synonymous. However, there is a technical difference between the two, so whenever I used the term in a technical sense, I had to change it to probability or chance. Fortunately, this process is almost done. The copy editor will make another round of changes and send a third version for final review. After that it goes to the printer in September.
The book is scheduled to appear in print on November 3rd. This is also election day, so you should pre-order it now to avoid having to vote and visit a bookstore to find my book on the same day. You can read a draft of Chapter 1 and view the table of contents at https://bit.ly/3ggPZK2, which has links to pre-order the book in both hardcover and e-book formats from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.