Decision Analysis for Managers

Chapter 4

Decisions and Alternatives

What Can We Do?

Now that we understand what we want and have explored the trade-offs between our various goals and objectives, we can begin to look at our alternatives. The tools we’ll explore include the decision hierarchy, decision trees, and the strategy table. All three of these tools are very useful and can be used within the context of an analysis or to add insight to a smaller problem.

Decision Hierarchy

There are three kinds of decisions we need to consider:

• closed decisions,

• strategic decisions, and

• tactical decisions.

Closed decisions are decisions that have already been made. They are sometimes referred to as boundary conditions. Closed decisions may be decisions that have been discussed ...