Customer Reviews

Strategic Decision Making: Multiobjective Decision Analysis with Spreadsheets

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This is by far the best book I've found on decision analysis. Major decisions are generally hard for two reasons: 1) you have multiple, conflicting goals (e.g., cost, schedule, risk, performance,...); 2) there are uncertainties in the outcomes since you can't predict the future. This book provides analytical techniques to address both of these issues and come up with a defensible decision. In addition, it provides techniques for addressing risk aversion, resource allocation, benefit/cost comparison, and other decision issues.

The techniques are presented clearly with mathematical formulas and spreadsheet equations to implement them. The reader will need some facility with mathematical formulas. Familiarity with spreadsheets is helpful, though not necessary. But, the examples using Excel Solver are so impressive that they just may motivate you to find out more.

The early chapters present excellent guidance on structuring the decision--goals and objectives, alternatives, and useful metrics. The first analytical technique is called "simple multi-attribute rating technique using swings" (SMARTS). This allows you to combine both subjective and objective criteria and their relative importance to get a meaningful comparison of alternatives. Who says you can't compare apples and oranges? The calculations are very simple.

Later chapters build on these techniques with approaches to considering and modeling the uncertainty that bedevils most decisions. Preferences are key in making any trade-off, and so there is a thorough treatment of utility functions.

Both the text and exercises build on meaningful business examples.

Highly recommended.

I like it for the small size, yet it provides 20 times more information on the subject matter. The instructor manual will provide readers with great examples for real-world applications.