Making Robust Decisions

Book excerpt: How do you approach difficult decisions? Decision making is an integral part of business and technology, as well as almost every other facet of life. Now there is a uniquely practical book that can help you tackle your next decision with confidence. In Making Robust Decisions: Decision Management for Business, Service, and Technical Teams, you will learn: why decision making can be so difficult; how to address the challenges that uncertain, conflicting, incomplete, or evolving information present; and how to achieve robust decisions despite the varied personalities and perspectives on your team. Combining more than ten years of study of decision support, cognitive psychology, product development, and business management with modern Artificial Intelligence concepts, Making Robust Decisions gives you the tools you need to produce optimal decisions—those that make good use of available information, achieve buy-in from all parties, and yield the best possible results. Packed with practical examples and case studies, Making Robust Decisions strikes a middle ground between self-help books that, while interesting in theory, may not help with real-world problems and highly technical analysis texts. It provides some methods you can implement right away and others that you and your organization can grow into. It is readable, useful, and readily applicable to a wide variety of decision-making problems. The methods introduced in Making Robust Decisions can help with such varied issues as selecting a concept, managing a portfolio, choosing a vendor, evaluating a proposal, selecting from architecture options, choosing a design, and determining whether to make or buy an item. They support military selection of the best course of action (COA), Analysis of Alternatives (AoA), and homeland security strategies. Making Robust Decisions includes chapters on making estimates, working with decision teams, framing problems, the influence of belief, and using AccordÔ decision-making software to support robust decisions. It includes decision-making templates and demonstrates how the methods described support Design for Six Sigma practitioners and provide help in un-sticking the OODA Loop. If you’re in the business of making difficult decisions while managing uncertainty, risk, and team conflict, then discover the new, effective techniques presented in Making Robust Decisions.