Decision analysis comes of age

Ten years ago, decision analysis was still an experimental management technique. But even then supporters claimed that eventually it would become for the manager what calculus is to the engineer. According to the authors of this article, decision analysis that incorporates personal judgment has not yet become what some expected, but it has, nonetheless, gained acceptance in many large corporations and government departments. One of the reasons for this acceptance is the greater flexibility and sensitivity of decision analysis to managers' needs than earlier forms had. In other words, today's decision analysis techniques can better take into account the people, the politics, the time pressures, and all the messy but critical factors that managers have to contend with. In this article, the authors describe three major forms of decision analysis and show how real managers have used decision tree analysis, probabilistic forecasting, and multiattribute analysis to solve real business problems.