This tutorial gives an introduction to some key concepts that you will use in TransparentChoice. It also includes links to other tutorials showing you how to use specific parts of the software.

1. TransparentChoice Training
Changing the world one
decision at a time

2. Agenda
• What is TransparentChoice?
• What is it used for?
• An introduction to core concepts

3. WHAT is TCh?
• Analytic Hierarchy Process, augmented by
– simple “efficient frontier”
– Import
– Scales
– Reporting and sensitivity analysis
– Simple decision optimization
• A set of tools for helping groups of people make
better decisions
• Powerful and simple collaborative decision
making software

4. TransparentChoice is used for
• Project prioritization and selection
• Procurement / vendor selection
• Strategy development
• R&D pipeline management
• Technology selection
• Hiring
• … any other multi-faceted, multi-stakeholder
decision

6. Core Concepts
Tutorials

7. Overview of a decision
Define and
weight
criteria
Collect and
score
alternatives
Analyse
results
Make a
decision
Discover your preferences and build consensus

8. Example: Project Prioritization
Define
criteria
Weight
criteria
Collect and validate
alternatives
Score
alternatives
Build consensus
Review results
and decide

9. What is a project?
• Any decision you are making using
TransparentChoice is a project
• A project consists of;
– A “project name and description”
– A set of alternatives (the list of options available to
you as an outcome of your decision)
– A set of criteria (the list of factors that you will use to
evaluate your criteria)
– Optionally, a set of scales and / or attributes
– A team
– Results and analysis
Confidential

10. Alternatives
• Alternatives are just the possible outcomes of
your decision. Examples include;
Type of Decision The Alternatives
Portfolio
prioritization and
selection
The list of projects from
which you’re trying to
choose.
Procurement /
vendor selection
The list of vendors
R&D pipeline
management
The list of potential
research projects
Hiring The list of candidates
Your decision can
only ever be as good
as your best
alternative, so make
sure you spend time
brainstorming some
great, wonderful,
creative ideas

11. Criteria
• Criteria are the factors
you use to evaluate the
alternatives
• Often, criteria are goals,
outcomes or targets you
want to affect by your
decision
• Criteria are often made
up of sub-criteria
Getting your criteria
right is key to making a
good decision.
Brainstorming is a good
way to generate a
strong list of criteria.
Click here for that
tutorial.

12. What is pairwise comparison
Pairwise comparison and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) came out of Wharton business school in
the 1970s. It is a way to break down complex decisions into a series of small judgements – this helps
eliminate bias and moves us from unreliable “intuition” towards more rational decisions.
The pairwise comparison process itself is remarkably simple. You’re presented with two options, A and
B, and you’re asked which you prefer. You indicate the strength of your preference on a 9-point scale
(called the Saaty scale, if you’re interested)
Pairwise comparison is extremely useful for capturing subjective decisions about things that cannot be
measured. For example, if you’re choosing a machine to diagnose disease, you will probably have to
make a trade-off between speed of diagnosis and accuracy. This is an inherently subjective decision. You
can’t create a scale that objectively measures the importance of speed and accuracy in diagnosing
illness.
Pairwise comparison is valuable because it lets you make trade-offs between multiple competing goals
in a rational and transparent way. And it’s all built off the combined fields of cognitive neuroscience and
decision science. It is this mechanism of breaking complex decisions into smaller judgements that
allows us to get over the “bounded rationality” problem and to dramatically reduce the impact of bias
on your decisions.
The most common use of pairwise comparison in TransparentChoice is to “discover” the weighting of
the criteria you will use to make decisions.

13. Scales
• Scales are used to score alternatives against
criteria
• They are used to translate an “judgement”
into a score. An judgement might be “Risk is
high” or “This project is strongly aligned with
strategy”
• The scores are then combined with the
weighting of criteria to create an overall score
for each alternative

14. What are attributes? What can I use
them for?
• Your alternatives can have “attributes”, or
properties, that are fixed.
– The energy efficiency of a fridge might be based
on lab data
– or the lift generated by a particular wing design
might be the output of a model
• Unlike scales and pairwise comparisons, you
don’t collect “opinions” on attributes, rather
they are entered into the alternative directly

15. What is a survey?
• A survey is simply a list of questions that is
generated by TransaprentChoice
• A survey is used to collect judgements
– Judgements about the relative importance of your
criteria or
– Scores for your different alternatives
• You can send a survey that covers
– Just criteria
– Just alternatives
– Or both criteria and alternatives

16. What is consensus building?
TransparentChoice helps improve the quality of your
decision but, just as importantly, it allows you to build
consensus and buy-in to your decision. As this work by
Stanford University shows, confidence in a decision can
be as important as the decision quality.
Consensus building in TransparentChoice is possible
because we’ve broken a big, complex (and possibly
contentious) decision down into small judgements. Each
person fills in a survey and then, when comparing
answers, you can instantly see where there is consensus
and where you need a little… discussion.

17. The process
Fill in individual surveys
•Can be done separately
•Or can be done as a group execise
Create a “Review group” – a group of people whose answers you want
to compare
Identify areas of consensus and areas of disagreement
Bring the group together and discuss the differences one by one and
resolve them
Sit back and enjoy a well-earned cup of tea

18. What is a review group?
• A review group is just a
group of people whose votes
you want to bring together
into a singe consensus
opinion
• Review groups can be used
to build consensus within a
team and then between
teams
• The example is for a
hospital, where the decision
team is broken into nurses,
doctors and hospital
administrators
• Consensus is built from the
bottom up
Nurses
review
group
Doctors
review
group
Admins
review
group
Clinical
review
group
Final
decision
group

19. Scores
• The scores in
TransparentChoice are a
measure of the attractiveness,
or benefit, of the different
alternatives
• To get the overall score for an
alternative, you multiply each
criterion weight with the
individual score for that
criterion and then add them
all together.
• But there is a critical
difference… see the next slide
Weighting Score Weighted Score
Criterion 1 10% x 0.130 = 0.013
Criterion 2 8% x 0.253 = 0.020
Criterion 3 12% x 0.108 = 0.013
Criterion 4 20% x 0.303 = 0.061
Criterion 5 17% x 0.498 = 0.085
Criterion 6 7% x 0.471 = 0.033
Criterion 7 14% x 0.217 = 0.030
Criterion 8 12% x 0.498 = 0.060
Total: 100% 0.315