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Can Software Really Help You Make Better Business and Technical Decisions? | Decision Making Tools and Techniques
The Decision Expert Newsletter™ - Volume 2; Issue 1When it comes to making important business and technical decisions, most leaders follow the traditional school of thought: Assemble the right players, gather the right information, think about it a while, and then (hopefully) make the right decision. Unfortunately, for complex problems there may be hundreds of pieces of uncertain, incomplete and conflicting pieces of information to consider. Over the last fifty years computers have been used to help manage and crunch complex information but not so in the support of decision-making. However, the ability to capture, organize, analyze, display and follow a set process is of major importance in making complex decisions, so why not enlist computer support here also? Consider a team of 5 people working together to make a decision about which projects to fund. This team of people represents different parts of the organization so they each hold part of the picture needed to make the decision, but none has sufficient knowledge to make the decision by themselves. They have narrowed the list of projects to their 6 favorites, and developed a list of 10 measures to evaluate their choices. They will address the cost, potential payback, business strategy fit, etc. As in most organizations, each of these measures holds varying importance to each member of the team. In order to reach this decision, this team will be discussing over 350 different pieces of information: 5 people evaluating 6 alternatives and weighing 10 measures. Plus, each of the 5 may have a different model of which of the measures are most important. This amount of information exists whether your team works ad-hoc, uses pencil and paper or utilizes software to help. In any decision process, one of the most difficult challenges is to develop a shared understanding of all of the information. This "understanding" does not mean that the team agrees on the information, but rather that each holds the same knowledge about the information. For example, if one team member uses a specific term to describe something, all team members understand it to mean the same thing. Often, it is very difficult to know if there is shared understanding. The only way to combat this is to be sure to make information explicit and easy to see. How can software help manage the breadth of information and develop a shared understanding of all the information? Accord™ software was developed to provide a process for decision-making, manage the data complexity, provide analysis to process uncertain, incomplete, evolving and conflicting information and supply a user interface that supports the generation of a shared understanding. In the example above, Accord can help easily manage the breadth of 350 different pieces of information by capturing all of the options and allowing them to be displayed in many easy to understand ways, i.e. all the information about one alternative, all the information about one criterion, a precise overview of the choices, or the measures by which to weigh the choices, etc. Accord's easy-to-use, graphical user interface makes information explicit, enabling shared understanding among members of the decision making team. When using pencil and paper or ad-hoc, people traditionally do not provide explicit evaluations understood by other team members. Just listen to what Hewlett-Packard concluded after using Accord and the Bayesian Team Support Methodology to better understand the optimization of numerous interacting and evolving properties of the ink and delivery components for their InkJet products. HP managers reported the following:
"We've used other decision-making software and methods, and none have provided the same level of understanding of the issues, and confidence in the outcomes, as Accord and the Robust Decisions process. The program enabled us to be more rigorous, quickly brought our team members to a common plane, and better quantified the inputs and results." -- HP Senior Technical Manager After using Accord in two separate experiments, what did Boeing think after utilizing Accord in comparison to their traditional decision making method called the decision matrix (Pugh's Method)? Boeing managers reported the following:
"Accord helped us quickly zero in on the best possible alternative and reach a conclusion with confidence." -- Boeing Process Leader Are you ready to improve the decision-making in your organization? Robust Decisions offers a full range of products and services that allow you to benefit by making the best decision every time. Learn more about how to build a strong foundation that enables individuals, teams and entire organizations to consistently make the best possible decisions. Request more information or call 541.754.3609. 
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