MCDA Decision Skills Course Details

Catalyze run two MCDA decision skills courses, the Decision Skills: Theory & Practice course and the Advanced Advanced Decision Skills: Facilitation & Analysis course.  The Decision Skills: Theory & Practice course are the first 4 days of the Advanced Decision Skills: Facilitation & Analysis course.  This advanced course runs for a further 5 days (usually Monday to Friday the following week) with a refresher 'Follow-up' day held a month later. 

A day by day breakdown of the courses is provided below.

This course provides an introduction to decision making with conflicting objectives, and provides opportunities for participants to gain hands-on experience in using Hiview and Equity software to create decision-support models for evaluation and appraisal, and for budgeting, prioritisation and resource allocation.

This course is also the first 4 days of the Advanced Decision Skills course.

Day 1

Background and theory of MCDA (Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis) and a hands-on exercise using Hiview.

• From decision theory to decision analysis: A short history, introducing the LSE school of decision analysis
• The blind problem: An exercise demonstrating the elements of decisions involving uncertainty and multiple, conflicting objectives.
• The eight stages for creating an MCDA evaluation or appraisal model
• Applying the eight stages using Hiview: a model of a real problem
• Examining results: two-dimensional graphs, sensitivity analyses up and down, sorts

Day 2

A grounding in techniques for representing uncertainty and value with numbers, and a review of all Hiview’s features.

• Scaling and meaningfulness
• Relative, fixed and identity scales
• Quantitative and qualitative scoring techniques
• Dealing with natural and constructed scales: value functions, continuous and discrete
• Accommodating uncertainty: probabilities to preferences
• Weighting in hierarchical value trees
• Constructing reports
• Potential applications of Hiview models in your organisation

Day 3

Understanding the decision analysis context of multi-criteria models and gaining an appreciation of the power of MCDA models for budgeting, prioritisation and resource allocation.

• A taxonomy of seven types of decision models
• A demonstration of an Equity model.
• The eight stages for creating a budgeting, prioritisation or resource allocation model
• Applying the eight stages using Equity: a model of a problem generated by the group
• Structuring the problem: Budget categories or areas, options or levels
• Modelling mutually exclusive and cumulative options

Day 4

Completing the model and examining its results. A review of all Equity’s features. A wrap-up session concludes the course.

• Scoring and weighting in Equity: within-criterion and across-criteria weights
• Examining results: area benefit/cost graphs, the efficient frontier, Order of Priority, position of a proposed package, finding a better frontier position, trade-off analysis
• Constructing reports
• Potential applications of Equity models in your organisation

Advanced Decision Skills: Facilitation & Analysis (10 days)

This course develops participants’ skills in facilitating work groups and decision conferences. It also provides important material on understanding organisation, issues of accountability and authority, strategic thinking and process consultancy that will enhance participants’ ability to work effectively in organisations. Much of the course is devoted to exercises in which participants take on roles of facilitator, analyst and participant for case studies using Hiview and Equity modelling. The four-day Decision Skills: Theory & Practice course is a pre-requisite for this course.

Day 1

The course begins with an introduction to decision conferencing, the facilitated process of engaging key players in modelling an issue of importance to their organisation. It then moves into the Buckaroo Bicycle Company case study for appraising strategic options to consolidate the organisation’s manufacturing facilities.

• What is decision conferencing?
• The decision conferencing process.
• Buckaroo Bicycle Company: Project scenario
• Briefs for roles
• Structuring the problem: objectives, criteria and options

Day 2

The day continues work on the case study, with an emphasis on understanding the context and structuring the issues. It concludes with a discussion of concepts that enable a consultant to understand organisations and the behaviour of people in them, and thereby to work with their clients more effectively. The roles of facilitator and analyst will be passed on during the day as the group work through the eight stages of creating and exploring a Hiview model.

• Further work on structuring—constructing a value tree in Hiview and entering options
• Facilitating a group in structuring
• Capturing qualitative information
• Scoring options against criteria
• Understanding organisations—organisational strata, task complexity, individual capacity, roles and role relationships, accountabilities and authority

Day 3

Today the model is completed and results examined. Many sensitivity analyses deepen understanding of the issues, eventually helping the group to recommend a course of action.

• Scoring and weighting in Hiview
• Creating non-linear value functions
• Use of sub-models
• Examining results: overall results and two-dimensional maps
• Sensitivity analyses and sorts
• Making recommendations

Day 4

The Wagon Train case study is introduced for participants to learn how Equity can be applied to allocating resources. Equity builds on principles illustrated in Hiview, but is more complex as it shows how to construct portfolios of best options from several separate MCDA models. It provides a holistic view of an organisation across separate units, and enables managers to make the best use of limited budgets.

• The Wagon Train case: Project scenario
• Briefs for roles
• Structuring the problem: criteria, resources, areas and options
• When and how to model options that are mutually exclusive, cumulative or mixed.
• Strategic thinking and management—strategic intent and vision, intermediate goals, what strategy is and isn’t, the importance of context, some useful techniques

Day 5

Continuing work on the Equity model, participants will trade off facilitator and analyst roles to gain experience in the eight stages of constructing the model. Some steps will be repeated as participants gain experience and confidence in carrying out individual steps. Help will be given in understanding definitions of the many terms used in MCDA and Equity.

• Scoring options within areas
• Within-criterion and across-criteria weighting
• Examining results—individual area curves of benefits versus costs, the efficient frontier
• Evaluating different portfolios of options
• More about dealing with uncertainty in MCDA models
• Gaining clarity about the meanings of terms in Equity
• Revising and improving the model
• Dealing with dependencies between options
• Accommodating time frames in the Equity criteria

Day 6 - (Refresher Day held a month later)

As the model is completed, the facilitator takes the group through many analyses to develop a deeper understanding of the problem and help them to make recommendations for the way forward. Following a discussion of the nature of facilitation and the principles of process consultancy, the course closes with reflections on the process of facilitation.

• Conducting trade-off analyses
• Using the model to ‘steer’ a portfolio close to or onto the efficient frontier
• Facilitating groups—roles, models, the nature of groups, tasks of the facilitator, types of interventions
• The 10 principles of process consultation
• Live and interactive practise workshop sessions.