Last week I shared a decision making method that utilized a two-by-two diagram to rank/filter ideas using two key parameters. While the method received positive feedback (thank you for the discussion), you asked what to use when you need to rank/filter ideas that involve more than just two parameters.
For this, I recommend using a “swim lane” diagram. (It involves parallel rows akin to lanes in a pool). This diagram allows you to rank an unlimited number of ideas by an unlimited number of qualities.
How It Works (The Basics)
Play along with me for our example. Let’s say you and I have come up with three really great ideas that will help us build awareness and excitement for our winter product line. They are summarized as…
- Idea A,
- Idea B, and
- Idea C.
We have also determined that there are four key parameters by which we want to judge these ideas. They are…
- Ease of Implementation (challenging to easy),
- Investment of Money (expensive to cheap),
- Brand Fit (erodes to strengthens), and
- Investment of Time/Training (high to low).
Let’s plop these into a swim lane diagram.
Next we’ll plot our three ideas where they fall in each lane.
Finally, I’ll connect the lines.
Now we can see how these how these ideas rank according to our key parameters.
- Idea A is difficult to implement and requires a lot of training, but doesn’t require a lot of cash.
- Idea B is the easiest to implement, but is fairly expensive.
- Idea C is expensive, but helps build the brand and doesn’t require much training.
At a glance, I would say Idea C may be our best bet.
I know… I know what you’re thinking… this isn’t very scientific. AND if we had any more ideas or parameters to plot, it would be unclear how the ideas rank.
If the basic method isn’t robust enough for what you’re working on, I recommend these additional steps.
How It Works (Advanced Method)
Let’s allocate an Importance Score – a value between 0% and 100% – for each parameter. 0 will indicate lowest importance. 100 will indicate highest importance.
We’ll then multiply the parameter score by the importance %. (The parameter score for “ease of implementation is 1, multiplied by the importance score of 100%… and so on).
Finally, we’ll do this for each idea and see which has the highest weighed score. THIS is the idea that is our best bet.
Using this advanced method I was able to confirm my initial assessment that Idea C would be our best bet.
With more parameters and more ideas to plot this advanced method will provide you reliable results.
After you’ve given this a try, please share your success stories!
Update
I’ve added a hand drawn version of the swim lane diagram below. I don’t want the fact I used a drawing program to make this look like a complicated exercise. You can use a white board or flip chart and do this process in just a few minutes. – Paul
Tags: Creative_process, decision_making, diagramming, Paul_Williams, problem_solving, swim_lanes, tools
Wow. Very nice diagram. Even though it might look a little bit complex from a first impression, the way you described reflects the useness of it.
Two thumbs up for your model!
This is a good method for analytical types, but my experience is it quickly falls apart if you don’t limit the decision criteria to matters that will gain concensus; otherwise, in a group environment, it is easy to get lost in the methodology instead of the decision. Also your weighting of each component needs to be fairly simple – I’ve found that using a 1 to 5 scale is easier to understand than percentages. It’s difficult sometimes to dinstinguish between a weight of 45% and 50%, for example. The Journal of Accountancy demonstrated the same method in an article (albeit without the swimmers lane analogy) about 12 years ago. I have used the technique to evaluate/present recommendatons to my employer’s (a Fortune 50 US company) executive team with success.
Jody – thanks for your comments. What I like about the swim lane diagram is it accomodates both the analytical and the visual types. I like it because it is a visual representation (right is bad, left is good) of the information. My colleagues in accounting like it because it follows a formula.
If you’re working with folks who may get hung up on the percentages… have them instead rate an importance score of cold, warm, and hot. Or low, medium, and high. Then assign a number: low (0), medium (45), and high (100).
The purpose of the importance scoring is to demonstrate/highlight that not all of the decision criteria has the exact same importance.
Money may not be an issue of you’re having a great sales year. (low importance score). Brand fit may be incredibly important if you’ve had bad PR lately (high importance score).
Thanks again for the discussion!
Really good stuff. Clients need us to help them understand good marketing decisions, and many clients are numbers driven. So helping them make decisions about marketing with these kinds of methods is great.
Thanks to Jody for the good additional input.
If you don’t limit the decision criteria to matters that will gain concensus
Or you could try annalisa from http://www.Annalisa.org.uk – software with multiple criteria and rankings to produce a result
I like it because it is a visual representation of the information.
Richard… Yes, there are some GREAT software solutions out there… I totally recommend them if you are going hardcore into problem solving systems/models…
However, I want to make sure folks know there are approachable tools, which don’t require rocket science that provide more than your “gut” when making decisions.
Consensus. Blech!
I’m not a fan of consensus when it comes to matters of remarkability and creative problem solving.
Yes, we all need to agree on our strategy and direction. But the decisions should be based on what best meets the objective… not a collection of personal preference.
Remarkable are killed when they’re selected based on “Is this idea comfortable to everyone?”
Few BIG ideas will be comfortable to everyone. To make everyone happy… you’ll carve out THAT portion… whittle down this chunk… and sand down the pointy edges…
What was once remarkable – is now lowest common denominator – looking like what everyone else is doing.
Often the problem isn’t the lack of ideas, but having the moxie to act on the remarkable ones.
Any constraints that you may have should be outlined when you’re defining your objectives. That way you’ve created something remarkable WITHIN the context of what is appropriate for your industry, business, brand…
When I searched on swim lanes I was expecting something else. But this is interesting and similar to, or identical to the ‘Perfromance Sensitivity’ plot in Expert Choice, which has been around for many years now. One difference however, is that the priorities derived with pairwise comparisions are not just on a scale of 1-5 but are ratio scale measures.
great job Paul.
Thanx for making me understand the idea so easily.
This type of graphic is a good example of making a graphic out of numeric information for no good reason. The numerical scores and the weighted scores are perfectly clear as numbers. A table of these would be clear and unconfusing. Why the useless obscuring of the information content with graphics?