The Creative Business Analyst - Part 3, Making Better Decisions

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Now that we’ve thoroughly understood the problem or opportunity we’re trying to address (The Creative Business Analyst Part 1) and come up with lots of ideas (Part 2), it’s time to be selective and decide which of our ideas will solve the problem and can be implemented by our organisation.

In this final paper of the series we look at decision making techniques – how to select the best idea from the many we’ve come up with – and how to justify our recommendation to our client, manager and peers.

COMMENTS

zarfman posted on Friday, December 11, 2009 11:42 PM

Hi:

The decision matrix from the DOE is very unimpressive. No wonder our education system is so screwed up.

Do all the selection criteria have the same importance? Doubtful, most likely they should be weighted.

How does one measure each of the selection criteria?

Are selection criteria independent? If not you have another problem.

T chart, the old salesman's trick not really helpful except for the salesman.

If two options are EQUALLY attractive I would expect them to have the same number of negatives. Absent that, are all the negatives equal in importance? Some negatives could be trivial.

The donkey bit reminds me of an old joke. Some philosophers were arguing about how many teeth a horse has. Someone said let's go find a horse and count the teeth. They threw him out of the society.

Donkey's are smart, they would solve the hay problem quickly.

The six hats deal, again the weights and measures problem, etc.

Regards,

Zarfman