ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 discusses decision-making, a critical part of the problem-solving process. The chapter begins by discussing qualitative and quantitative decision-making, decision traps that produce bad decisions, decision outcomes and how to avoid unanticipated consequences, as well as sources of those unanticipated consequence. The chapter then discusses the four key elements of decision-making and provides some anecdotal examples. The major part of the chapter discusses seven decision-making tools. Three of the tools are well-known: Decision Trees, Multi-attribute Variable Analysis (MVA) and Pair-wise Comparison (PWC). The Pugh Matrix is a cross between MVA and PWC but can also be misused to bias the decision. After discussing Prioritization, the chapter shows how the other tools can be used to perform Prioritization. Lastly, the chapter introduces the Perfect Score Approach; an original tool first used at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC) that works very well when there is a plurality of opinions among the stakeholders and can also be successfully used when geographically separated stakeholders need to be involved in the decision.
