How to prioritize your decision-making criteria

The process for groups to agree on criteria priorities

Decision making process

Goal Criteria Decision

Brainstorming

Structuring

Prioritization You are here

Why is criteria prioritization important?

• Your criteria represent your business goals. If you use the wrong criteria, you won’t achieve your goals.

• Making criteria explicit means that everyone has the same view of the world and has a common „language”.

• Not all criteria are equal. Some will be more important than others and members of your team will have different priorities. In order to make a decision together, you need to build a consensus.

Are you ready for criteria prioritization?

1. Team. Did you invite everyone who should participate?

2. Goal. Is it clear, written down and approved by your team?

3. Criteria. Does your team understand and approve the selected criteria? This video will help you brainstorm a list of criteria, if you have not already done it.

Next slides…

1. How to prioritize your criteria list.

2. How to prioritize criteria hierarchy.

3. How software can help.

Part 1. How to prioritize criteria list

On the next few slides we will show you how to use Analytic Hierarchy Process to prioritize you criteria list.

Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)

• AHP can be used to discover the relative importance of criteria.

• AHP has been researched over 40 years and is tried and tested by many organizations since 1970s.

• It is based on pairwise comparisons…

Why pairwise comparisons

• Simplify the problem by replacing a complex question about priorities with a set of simple comparisons.

• Allow algorithm to check the consistency of your priorities.

• Makes collaboration simple since each difference of opinion can be resolved on the level of comparison.

How it works

• Compare all criteria in pairs. Each comparison is about indicating:

– more important criterion (from the 2 compared)

– level of preference (on a 9-point scale).

• Algorithms work out the overall priorities based on these individual judgments.

• If you’re a math junkie, you can see how matrix calculations and eigenvectors are used to calculate your priorities.

How it works

Comparison More important Preference

Quality vs. Time

Quality vs. Social impact

Quality vs. Cost

Time vs. Social impact

Time vs. Cost

Social impact vs. Cost

You need to make these judgments…

How it works

Comparison More important Preference

Quality vs. Time

Quality vs. Social impact

Quality vs. Cost

Time vs. Social impact

Time vs. Cost

Social impact vs. Cost

Indicate the more important criterion (or say they are

equal)

How it works

Comparison More important Preference

Quality vs. Time

Quality vs. Social impact

Quality vs. Cost

Time vs. Social impact

Time vs. Cost

Social impact vs. Cost

Use a 9-point scale to define the preference:

1 – Equal 3 – Moderate 5 – Strong 7 – Very Strong 9 – Extreme 2,4,6,8 – Intermediate

How it works

Comparison More important Preference

Quality vs. Time Quality 4 (Moderate+)

Quality vs. Social impact Quality 2 (Weak)

Quality vs. Cost Quality 5 (Strong)

Time vs. Social impact Time 2 (Weak)

Time vs. Cost Time 3 (Moderate)

Social impact vs. Cost None 1 (Equal)

This means that Quality is 4 times more important than

Time…

Results

Based on pairwise comparisons you can calculate priorities. Calculations without dedicated software might be very time consuming…

AHP for GROUP decisions

1. Ask each participant to make comparisons.

2. Review comparisons together. Identify and discuss the differences of opinions.

3. Try to establish the common value for each comparison.

4. Use average values to eliminate deadlocks.

For example…

AHP for GROUP decisions

Disagreement. Discuss it and discover the

reason…

AHP for GROUP decisions

Or use the average value to resolve

deadlock…

Part 2. How to prioritize criteria hierarchy

Main criteria are usually not detailed enough to be meaningful. E.g. Risk is often made up of technology risk and organizational risk. These individual elements of risk can be easily quantified.

On the next few slides we will show you how to prioritize criteria organized into hierarchy…

Hierarchy = Multiple lists

Choose the best projects

Break-even score

Risk

Technology Risk

Organizational Risk

Strategic goal 1

Use pairwise comparisons to prioritize each branch (as a list)…

Hierarchy = Multiple lists

Choose the best projects

Break-even score

Risk

Technology Risk

Organizational Risk

Strategic goal 1

List 1. Subcriteria of the main goal. Prioritize

them in the context of goal.

Hierarchy = Multiple lists

Choose the best projects

Break-even score

Risk

Technology Risk

Organizational Risk

Strategic goal 1

List 2. Subcriteria of Risk. Prioritize them in the

context of risk.

Hierarchy = Multiple lists

Basic math will help you to calculate global priorities (hierarchy) based on the local priorities (on the lists).

Part 3. How software can help

• Automatically generates surveys based on the hierarchy of criteria.

• Makes it easy for evaluators to complete surveys while checking consistency.

• It helps the group to build the consensus quickly.

• It does the math and displays graphical results.

Next steps…

• See a step-by-step tutorial on how to use TransparentChoice to prioritize your criteria.

• Schedule a live demo of TransparentChoice software and we will guide you through the prioritization process.

• Request our support for your first project. Get the software and support needed to successfully complete a pilot project.

• Get the free trial and try it by yourself.