DECISION ANALYSIS – A PRIMER

How to Use DecisionSpeak™ and Question Charts (Q-Charts™)

By Ronald G. Ross


Format: 49 pages / PDF
A Business Rule Solutions Primer
FREE DOWNLOAD

Click to download


Take a top-down business view of the decisions in your business processes. Visualize, explore, and get ready to harvest the decision logic.

Decision analysis involves identifying, diagraming and analyzing key questions arising repetitively in day-to-day business activity.

The end-product is the explicit decision logic, which can take the form of:

  • decision structures.
  • decision tables.
  • business rule statements.

For the decisions you achieve …

  • consistency.
  • highest possible flexibility.
  • lowest possible cost-of-management.

Externalizing decision logic from processes reduces their complexity significantly. It also results in decision logic that is far more …

  • accessible.
  • adaptable.
  • re-usable.

Overall, externalizing and single-sourcing decision logic is essential to achieving business agility. This Primer shows you how to make decision analysis a key technique in your professional toolkit.

Table of Contents

  • What Decision Analysis Is
  • The Basic Elements of Operational Business Decisions
    • More About Decision Tasks
  • Using DecisionSpeak to Ask Questions
    • Basic DecisionSpeak Conventions for Expressing the Question
  • Analyzing a Decision: Q-COE
    • Considerations
    • Exceptions
  • Decision Dependencies
    • Relevance Dependency
    • Consideration Dependency
    • Outcome Dependency
    • Relevance Dependency vs. Outcome Dependency
  • Representing a Complete Decision Structure: Q-Chart
  • Hybrid Dependency Diagrams
  • Appendix 1: What DecisionSpeak Is
  • Appendix 2: Kinds of Decision Appropriate for Decision Analysis under DecisionSpeak
  • Appendix 3: Decision Rules vs. Behavioral Rules
  • Appendix 4: More about Considerations and Cases
  • Appendix 5: Specification of Scope for Decision Analysis Under DecisionSpeak
  • Appendix 6: Alignment of Scope in Decision Dependencies
  • Appendix 7: About Considerations in Outcome Dependencies
  • Appendix 8: Example of a Hybrid Dependency Diagram
  • Glossary
  • About the Author: Ronald G. Ross
  • About Business Rule Solutions

Format: 49 pages / PDF
A Business Rule Solutions Primer
FREE DOWNLOAD

Click to download