Designing SNAKES AND LADDERS: An Analogy for Asset Management Strategy Development

© 2015, The Author(s) 2015. Background. Asset Management improvement initiatives often fail to deliver the intended value. Poorly developed strategy contributes to these failures. Aim. To assist managers in developing skills in Asset Management (AM) strategy in order to meet the requirements set out in the new ISO 55001 Asset Management Standard. Method. Managers develop the layout for a SNAKES AND LADDERS (S&L) game board. This involves managers deciding what strategic activities to pursue (ladders) and where to place them on the board. Other considerations include the sequence of the ladders and their length, where the length is a proxy for impact of the activity. Managers also need to identify what risks (snakes) are associated with each activity and what impact they have (the length of the snake). Results. The board development process helps managers to identify factors crucial to effective strategy development such as limiting the number of activities, sequencing these activities over an appropriate time scale, assessing risks of each activities and the consequence of risks being realized on subsequent activities. Conclusion. The S&L training is an accessible and time-efficient way to get managers to engage with each other and with crucial concepts in strategy development in the asset management context.