Do you need to make a decision? Are there multiple criteria? Are some of the criteria quantitative while others are qualitative? Are there a group of decision makers involved, some with differing opinions?
What you need is Multiple Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) or otherwise known as Multiple Objective Decision-Making.
Much research has been done regarding this topic, and many methods exist as a result.
Probably the best-known method, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was developed by Professor Thomas L. Saaty, former distinguished professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Sadly, Dr. Saaty passed away in 2017.
AHP works with a set of criteria used to evaluate the alternatives under consideration.
Application of AHP involves four steps:
- Structure the decision problem and select criteria
- Prioritize the criteria
- Compare each alternative with respect to each criterion
- Obtain an overall score for each alternative
Glenn Mazur, Executive Director QFD Institute and International Council for QFD discusses why AHP is a powerful tool.
While there are several commercial software programs for implementing AHP, Dr. Saaty and his wife created the non-profit Creative Decisions Foundation in 1996 whose aim is to disseminate AHP.
To this end they have developed and provide the software SuperDecisions as the only free educational software that implements AHP. Its development and maintenance are sponsored by the Creative Decisions Foundation.
More about this, including an even more general method Analytic Network Processing (ANP) and links to download the free software to implement both AHP and ANP can be found here.
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