Chapter 5 Decision Management Flashcards
The purpose for decision management is select the most beneficial course of project action where alternatives exist
What is the purpose of the Decision Management Process?
The purpose for decision management is select the most beneficial course of project action where alternatives exist
Inputs to the Decision Management Process?
Decision situation – decisions related to decision gates are taken on a pre-arranged schedule; other requests for a decision may arise fro any stakeholder and originate from any life cycle process.
Controls and enablers for the decision management process?
Applicable Laws and regulations
Industry Standards Agreements
Project Procedures and Standards
Project Directives
Organization/Enterprise Policies, Procedures, and Standards – including guidelines and reporting mechanisms
Organization/Enterprise Infrastructure
Project infrastructure
Activities in Decision Management process?
Plan and Define Decisions
Analyze the decision information
Track the Decision
Common approaches to Decision management?
Take in consideration prior history
Involve all relevant persons in the decision-making activities
Maintain history of prior studies and decisions in order to not waste effort when old questions reappear.
Skinners list of 10 principles of good decision making
- Use a value creation lens for developing and evaluating opportunities
- Clearly establish objectives and tradeoffs
- Discover and frame the problem
- Understand the business situation
- Develop creative and unique alternatives
- Identify experts and gather meaningful and reliable information
- Embrace uncertainty as the catalyst of future performance
- Avoid “analysis paralysis” situations
- Use systematic thinking to connect current to future situations
- Use dialogue to foster learning and clarity of action
What is the Lean Manufacturing addition to skinner’s list of 10 principles for good decision making?
Delay commitment until the last possible moment (because it is easier to change a decision that is not made)
Describe Decision Tree steps
Start on left with initial decision point and proceding to the right
Accurately represent each point where a decision is to be made and all possible consequence of decision
Assign probability of occurrence and outcome of each decision at each decision point
Expected value of winning contract is sum of expected value at the chance node times probability for each branch
What are three other decision analysis techniques, aside from decision trees?
Sensitivity analysis - include relationships between the outcomes and their probabilities to find how “sensitive” a decision point is to numerical values
Value of information from methods - expending some effort in data analysis and modeling can ipmprve optimum expected value
Multi-attribute utilitiy analysis - develop equivalencies between dissimilar units of measure
What are the outputs of the Decision Making Process?
Decision management strategy
Decision Report – approved decision documented and communicated along with rational, assumptions, constants, and supporting analysis
Trade studies provide what features?
- A way to select one of two or more alternative approaches
- They support decisions in all stages of system development
- Address a wide range of problems
- Requirements can be traded against constraints
- Architecture features can be traded against dictated equipment or interface requirements
- Alternative functional or performance choices can be traded to determine optimal configuration
What relationship do trade studies have to formal design reviews?
Make it easier to justify decisions if you have trade studies to back it up
What are the three levels of formality for trade studies?
- Formal – use standardized methodology & formally document and reviewed with customer at a decision review
- Informal – same as formal but only recorded in Engineers notebook. No formal review.
- Mental
What factors drive the choice of the level of trade performed?
- Consequences of project
- Complexity of issue
- Resources available
What techniques are available for trade studies?
- Multiple attribute utility analysis (MAUA)
- Analytic Hierarch Process (AHP)
- Decision Trees
- Maximum expected utility (MEU)
Key trade study activities
- Frame the decision – clearly articulate the decision being made
- Determine Screening and Selection Criteria – screening criteria (“must have”) identify the mandatory; selection criteria (“want to have”) discriminate between viable alternatives
- Establish Weighting Values – reflect the relative importance of each criterion in the selection process (1..10 with 10 being most critical or the selection)
- Identify Viable Alternatives - in general, between four and seven reasonable alternatives ensure viable ones are not overlooked.
- Assign Measures of Merit and Evaluate Alternatives – assign measures to each criterion to see how well various alternatives satisfy the selected criteria. Weighted totals of weighted utilitiy values (performance x weight) are often used
- Conduct Sensitivity analysis – vary the utility values and weights to see what would change. If the decision is based on an individual factor that score needs to be given extra care as it essentially determines the selection
- Determine adverse consequences – use risk assessment methodology
- Present the Results - formal report containing descrpitions and graphs
- Prepare formal trade study reports – present at customer design review
Risk may be decomposed into what types of risk?
- cost risk
- schedule risk
- programmatic risk
- performance risk
What should be included in formal trade study reports?
- Summary description of each alternative solution
- Summary of the evaluation factors used
- Summary of the weighting values used and an explanation of why or how each were selected
- Detailed description of each alternative solution
- Summary description odf why or how the specific scores were assigned to each of the alternatives for each criteria
- Copy of the analysis spreadsheet if one was used
- Graphical display of the overal scores
- Graphical display of the weighted scores for each criterion for each of the alternatives
