If you’ve heard me speak at any conferences or read my blog over the last few years, you’ll know that I’m really, really into Real Options.

I’m half-tempted to get “Options have value. Options expire,” added to my tattoo. The principles which Chris Matts and Olav Maassen champion have become such guiding forces in my life that many of the decisions I make are only done in order to increase the number of options available to me. Once the whole innate phobia of uncertainty is out of the way, it’s a fantastic way to live life in freedom and with fun.

Real Options are also a phenomenal model for managing risk on software project – and not the only brilliant idea that Chris and Olav have!

So imagine my absolute joy when I saw this in the works – a graphical novel, fun and easy to read and understand, dealing with all kinds of ideas around risk management. The skiing story at the end of the first chapter (downloadable from the link) is the same one that Chris shared with me to help me understand his ideas.

Chris and Olav describe it as “a business graphic novel on managing risk. The book is a culmination of their collaboration on the real options model over the last six years. It provides examples of how to manage a project using the real options model and outlines a simple technique for making better (informed) decisions. It also covers more advanced topics such as information arrival process, game theory, feature injection, paradox of choice and how to deal with uncertainty. While geared towards project managers, the book benefits anyone making decisions in their job or daily life. Chris and Olav focus on making risk management easily understandable as everybody does this every day without being aware of it. ”

I am very confident that this book is going to be ground-breaking. I am so confident that I’ve already laid out £500 of hard-earned cash for a chance to star in the book (sorry, that option has expired). I don’t regard this as charity. This is me doing something small to pay Chris and Olav back for their guidance and help over the last few years, and it’s money they’ve helped me earn anyway. Estimated publishing date is Winter 2012… assuming they manage to raise the funds to kick it off.

If you would like to help these two fantastic people get this novel out of the door and benefit from the same help they’ve given me, please go to the Sponsume site before April 14th and pick an option. You never know – you could be the proud owner of a limited edition of a book that turns out to be as ground-breaking as “The Goal”*.