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Green DA:

^{Dave Charlesworth - Practical Multi-Attribute Analyses}

DA academics either postulate that all subject criteria can be resolved into financial or propose complex methodology for multi-attribute analysis. A practical methodology with case studies will be presented.

Patrick Leach - Order to Unorder – the Third Axis of DA (and how it applies to sustainable energy)

David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone have provided a framework for considering problem scenarios based on the degree of order in the situation. This framework uses four loose categories: Stable, Complicated, Complex, and Chaotic. Traditional applications of DA appear to be designed primarily to deal with Complicated scenarios under the Snowden-Boone terminology.

Increasingly, however, the major problems facing businesses, governments, and societies are Complex in nature, rather than Complicated. This distinction derives from the increasing importance of complex non-linear systems, such as a highly interconnected global economy, social networks which allow ideas to become actions (and reactions) extremely rapidly, and natural systems such as global climate and local ecosystems which are comprised of interactive and interdependent forces and agents.

It is useful to distinguish between complex systems which are comprised of a large number of essentially similar agents and those which are comprised of a handful of distinctive agents. The former is the realm of complex systems analysis, or complexity science; the latter is the province of game theory. Both are useful tools for modeling the behavior of systems which are beyond basic Monte Carlo simulation and/or decision trees.

The issue of sustainable resources is one in which all three facets of analysis – traditional stochastic modeling, complexity science, and game theory – can and should be used to improve our understanding of the possible futures we face, and what we may or may not be able to do to affect those futures. Perhaps the biggest challenge of all will not be using these tools effectively enough to gain key insights; rather, it will be changing human behavior in the wake of those insights.

Max Henrion - Exploratory DA of the Future of the Automobile

Interacting with Decision Makers:

Jack Kloeber - Soft Skills Workshop & Risk Tolerance Elicitation

Eric Bickel -Discretization, Simulation, and Swanson's (Inaccurate) Mean

Swanson's Mean (SM) is heavily used within the oil and gas industry to approximate continuous probabilty distributions such as the lognormal. In this paper, we document the errors induced by this practice, which, as we show, has no theoretical justification for any distribution other than the normal. In parallel, we review methods to discretize continuous distributions and compare these methods to Monte Carlo simulation. We demonstrate that the best discretization methods have an accuracy equivalent to that of tens of thousands of Monte Carlo trials.

Stuart Harris, Decision Frameworks - I love DA. I just wish we didn't have to deal with people.

This is about how [lower] left brain decision analysts can deal with [upper] right brain clients. Will give examples of how communication that we see as reasonable as DA practitioners often has to change to successfully get the buy-in and understanding of those in need of a decision/solution.

Case Studies:

Charles Persinger, Sr Research Scientist, Eli Lilly & Co : Decision Consulting at Lilly: a Journey

Huybert Groenendaal - Probabilistic Modeling to Support and Facilitate Decision Making in Early Drug Development

Early drug development decisions are typically complex, highly uncertain and require large investments. Clinical studies, literature, competitive information, as well as statistical modeling studies can be used to reduce uncertainty and support decision. This talk will discuss how probabilistic modeling can greatly support (team) decision making during early drug development (first in human to Phase II-a), and use example applications to show how this approach is different from traditional analytical methods used in early drug development.

Paul Papayoanou, Ph.D., President, SGG - Oil & Gas Appraisal and VOI: How the Game Changes Things

Through the case study, in which decision analysis and game theory produced starkly different VOI results, the talk will provide answers to several key questions:
• Under what circumstances can VOI be negative?
• What mechanisms can create that negative value?
• How do I test my decision frame to know if my VOI might be negative?
• How do I calculate VOI in the context of a game?

DA Implementations:

Ellen Coopersmith - DA Implementation…Key Ingredients and the Variety of Recipes for Success

Decision making is a skill in and of itself, not unlike other technical and business skills. As such, it needs to be continually fostered, monitored and grown appropriately. For this to occur and continually improve, most companies establish a decision quality implementation plan and infrastructure to nurture and guide its use and growth organizationally. The ingredients for successful decision quality implementation are the same across industries, but the "recipe" differs from organization to organization. This interactive session will discuss the essential ingredients for successful decision quality implementation, and enable breakouts to identify improvement areas, share actionable ideas to improve gaps and understand how implementation "recipes" differ around the globe.

Non-traditional DA Application:

Rob Kleinbaum - The Art of Making the Right Thing Happen

This paper discusses the link between DA/DDP and a company's culture. It presents a new definition of corporate culture, shows the cultural obstacles to decision making, and how to overcome these problems. Understanding culture shows how to manage culture's obstacles and to use culture to "supercharge" problem solving, therefore making DA/DDP much more effective. DA/DDP will surface problems with the culture and help senior executives recognize the need for change.

Jerry Lieberman and Rick Mauro - Technology Selection Decision: With the Shoe on the Other Foot

Treating a technology selection decision as an investment is difficult. Support costs are usually pretty clear, but often underestimated. Switch costs are less clear with many of them neglected or hard to quantify. The benefits and indirect costs to the business are even harder to quantify. Yet, for a technology supporting your core business, the investment is typically large; the pain of deployment is worse; and realizing anticipated benefits to the business are critical for the firm’s success. As an additional twist on the traditional DA decision frame, we had the technology supplier as our client trying to better understand how their customers made technology switch decisions. We will talk about ideas we developed and choices we made to solve these problems and deliver a completed analysis fully meeting our client’s expectations.

Jim Felli - A Dark Tango through the Right Side of the Brain 

One spoke of the decision quality wheel that is often cited as a glaring weakness for both individuals and firms is "creative alternative generation." We will discuss a new method for engaging the wholebrain in the alternative generation process that can help scientists access radically heightened levels of creativity.

Oil & Gas:

Kevin Powell, Shell (co-authors Jeremy Brann, Steve Letros, Ashutosh Patwardhan)
Enabling better-informed decisions via risk and uncertainty benchmarking

Leslie Armentrout, Hess

Vish Viswanathan (Ex J&J now with Chevron) - Comparing Decision Analysis in Pharma and Oil

Government/Military:

Greg Parnell - Measurement for National Security Analysis: Theory and Best Practices

MAJ Dave Hughes - Survey of Value-Focused Thinking Applications