TransparentChoice Training

Changing the world one decision at a time

Results and decision

How can TransparntChoice help?In other tutorials, we’ve talked about how to improve the quality of your decision and about how to increase buy-in to the process, but now it’s time to make your decision.TransparentChoice helps you do this by:

• Giving you a clear picture of the attractiveness of each of your alternatives• Focusing the executive discussions around well-structured process and

information that is easy to digest, yet is powerful and insightful• Making decisions more defensible by making both the criteria and weightings

used to make the decision clear and explicit• Testing the “robustness” of a decision through sensitivity analysis• Letting you immediately see options that give the best value for money• Identifying groups that are likely to be unhappy with your decision, giving you the

opportunity to “mitigate” the situation

Before you begin

• If you want to see results for groups of people, you must first:– Build a review group containing

all the people or groups for whom you wish to see results

– Make sure you’ve reviewed the group data. You can do this;• Manually – review each group

judgement individually• Auto-review – accept the average

score for all judgements

Learn how to work with review groups from

this tutorial.

Navigate to your results

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Method 1:1. Navigate to the “Analyse results” page2. Identify the review group or individual for which you’d like to see results3. Select the report you want to see

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Navigate to your results

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Method 21. Navigate to the “Collect

input” page

2. Select “Build consensus…”

3. Find the review group for which you’d like to see results

4. Choose the report you’d like to see

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Scores• The scores in

TransparentChoice are a measure of the attractiveness, or benefit, of the different alternatives

• To get the overall score for an alternative, you multiply each criterion weight with the individual score for that criterion and then add them all together.

• But there is a critical difference… see the next slide

Weighting Score Weighted ScoreCriterion 1 10% x 0.130 = 0.013 Criterion 2 8% x 0.253 = 0.020 Criterion 3 12% x 0.108 = 0.013 Criterion 4 20% x 0.303 = 0.061 Criterion 5 17% x 0.498 = 0.085 Criterion 6 7% x 0.471 = 0.033 Criterion 7 14% x 0.217 = 0.030 Criterion 8 12% x 0.498 = 0.060

Total: 100% 0.315

If you want to see the final results, you need data in your review group to both weight your criteria and score your alternatives. If you get an

error in the results, check you have data for all criteria /

alternatives

AHP vs. SpreadsheetsThe way TransparentChoice calculates scores is basically the same you’d do in a weighted scoring spreadsheet. There is one vital difference though, and it’s this difference that transforms the reliability and impact of your decision.

In a spreadsheet, your simply “agree” your weightings. This process is open to all the individual biases and limitations of the human mind coupled to negative group dynamics. This is where most organizations fall down.

The spreadsheet gives the appearance of “logic”, but is really the result of your “gut” telling you the answer and then you trying to justify your decision. If you’ve ever gone back and “played with weightings” until you were happy, you know what I mean.

AHP, the formalized methodology used in TransparentChoice, in addresses this problem head-on. It is built on a solid foundation of cognitive neuroscience and decision science. The process of breaking your decision down into small judgements helps eliminate bias. The process of making judgements first as individuals and then bringing them together to build consensus not only reduces destructive group dynamics, but also improves the quality of the decision through the discussions that lead to consensus.

In a way, AHP and pairwise comparisons help you “discover” your real preferences and priorities in a way that is virtually impossible using simple weighted scoring techniques.

Now you know why your TransparentChoice results are valid, let’s go

see how they work…

Viewing scores

1. Select Scores from the “results drop-down”

2. Select the “goal” from the drop-down

3. Scores for each alternative is displayed in the chart

4. The contribution from each criterion is clearly shown

5. The weight of each criterion is given here

6. You can hide the data table by clicking here

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Using scores

The score is a measure of the attractiveness of an alternative. The way to interpret this varies depending on the use case. Here are some examples.

Project prioritization

Procurement R&D Pipeline management

Hiring Strategy development

The attractiveness of a project is interesting, but not the end of the story as it takes no account of cost. See later slide.

The score shows the vendor that would offer the “best balanced” solution.

Later, we can use score to assess “best value” options, or use the score directly to show “least cost acceptable option”

The score gives an indication of the attractiveness of a project.

Reaching different values is sometimes used to support stage-gate decisions.

Hiring is such a subjective task that scores can take on a pivotal role. Scores show which candidate is most attractive and why, and does so without relying on “gut feeling”

Different strategic options, often very different options, can be directly compared for attractiveness.

The best options can then be used as inspiration for related ideas which, in turn, can be selected based on their scores

Viewing weightings1. Select “Criteria weights” from the

“results drop-down”2. You can see both local and global

weights for each criterion3. Local weights: the weight of each

criterion within its own “branch” of the hierarchy. Local weights ad up to 100% within each level of each branch

4. Global weights: the contribution that each criterion makes to the overall score. It’s calculated as the product of weight “up the hierarchy”. In the example, the global weight for Criterion 1.3 is calculated as:

30% (Crit. 1.3 local weight)

x 20% (the local weight of the parent of 1.3, criterion 1)

6%

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Goal

Crit. 2

Crit. 1

Crit. 3

Crit. 1.1

Crit. 1.2

Crit. 1.3

20% 40% 40%

20% 30%50%3

Viewing weightings1. There are other views of criteria accessible

from the drop-down. Select “Bottom level criteria”

2. This displays the weighting for the bottom level criteria (orange criteria below)

3. This lets you check that there are no criteria that dominate, or have such a small weighting that they are not really meaningful criteria

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Goal

Crit. 2

Crit. 1

Crit. 3

Crit. 1.1

Crit. 1.2

Crit. 1.3

Crit. 1.3.1

Crit. 1.3.2

Crit. 3.1

Crit. 3.2

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Viewing weightings

1. You can also choose to view weightings down one branch of the hierarchy. Simply select the part of the hierarchy you want to drill into from the drop-down

2. You will then see the weightings for sub-criteria down that branch of the hierarchy

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Sensitivity analysis1. Sensitivity analysis gives you insight

into how robust your decision is to changes in criterion weighting. Select “Sensitivity analysis” from the “results drop-down”

2. Select the criterion for which you want to see sensitivity analysis

3. Each horizontal line shows how the score for an alternative varies as weighting of the criterion changes

4. The vertical line shows the current weighting of the criterion

5. Crossing lines show where the “best” alternative changes

6. You can select which alternatives to show

7. Or “invert” the selection of alternatives

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Score / cost analysis

The scores in TransparentChoice represent the “attractiveness” or “benefit” of each alternative. But if you’re picking a portfolio, or making another decision where value-for-money matters, you need to be able to select alternatives on the basis of value-for-money.

This is where score/cost analysis comes in. It allows you to quickly pick the most efficient portfolio of projects, or the best value-for-money vendor, etc.

In fact you can use any numeric attribute as the constraint. For example, you could plot score / man-hours, if people are your main constraint.

Score / cost analysis

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1. Select “Score/cost analysis” from the results drop-down

2. Select the constraint you want to use (usually “cost”)

3. Each bubble represents one of your alternatives. The larger the bubble, the higher the score / cost ratio

4. Projects up-and-to-the-left offer better value for money

Score / cost analysis1. You can hide / show the data

behind the chart2. The score / cost ratio is shown as a

percentage with the best value project being 100%

3. The cost of “selected projects” is shown here

4. If you are selecting a portfolio, start de-selecting alternatives starting at the bottom and working your way up

5. Stop when the total selected project spend falls within your budget

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