Dwaffler examples

Product Development

Challenges:

• Design a winning product.
• Current customers want more features.
• You need a competitive edge.
• Support wants immediate changes.
• Budget and resources are limited.

1. Identify and, using Dwaffler, weight relative importance of criteria of an "ideal":

Example criteria (can be subjective and/or objective):

• Requires little additional development.
• Will increase saleability.
• Augments existing features' attractiveness.
• Will cause buzz in the market.
• Secures a strong competitive advantage.
• Solves or minimizes a number of existing issues.
• Can be rapidly implemented.
• Has potentially high return on investment.

2. Evaluate your product options or features against each criterion. Dwaffler integrates assessment scores with each weighted criterion.

3. Similarly, determine "risk level": First, identify potential risks and weight their degree of harm. Secondly, assess your options in terms of their probability of encountering the risks.

4. Estimate Costs:
Don't confuse amount of cost as "risk." Examples of risks related to costs (put in list of risks):

• We will not recoup investment for a long period.
• Timing of peak negative cash flow is inopportune.

5. Review Results:
Each option's key strengths. Potential areas of weakness (benefit or risk). A comparative overall positioning with a cost overlay.

6. Strategy Wizard can help you develop a go-to-market plan.

Strategic Planning

Direction.   Objectives.   Aligned Actions.

1. Review Direction and Scope (Vision/ Mission). Where and what do you wish to be? In "x" years' time.
What broad brush stroke types of activites are needed to get there?

2. Brainstorm.
Thoughts will range from conceptual to highly tactical. Both are needed: for direction, and the steps to get there.

3. Separate.
Determine which thinking is more high level, and which is tactical (actions that can be scheduled and which help achieve higher level statements).

4. Prioritize.
Higher level thoughts are your Objectives. Discover their relative importance, in terms of your Vision/Mission ("Context").

5. Assess Actions.
Assess potential Actions in terms of how strongly they support achieving the now-weighted Objectives.

6. Check robustness.
The "king pin" actions, those critical to success, as well as Actions you'd be better off dropping, are clear.
Review potential overall success level if you successfully were to carry out assessed Actions.

7. Develop Action estimates and timelines.
Assign key Actions estimates for level of effort, resources and duration needed. Sequence and map (how best to do? consecutively? concurrently?). Apply a timeline.

Plan completed!!

8. Evaluate progress.
Using a copy of the file, periodically assess each Action's then-current status in terms of achieving each Objective -- an ongoing report card.

Allocating funds or budgets

When faced with:

• Competition for limited funds.
• Champions for projects.
• Everything seeming worthy.

1. Context: Define the overall outcome you desire from the process.

Example: "Achieve fair and equitable dispersion of funding that stimulates greater productivity across all organizations."

2. Parameters for amounts: Identify limits, guarantees, regulatory requirements.

3. Factors for judging: Define criteria or characteristics of an "ideal" project or recipient. These can be subjective and/or objective.

Examples:

• Has significant ROI potential
• Reaches a new market or population
• Is meeting stated milestones
• Is staying within current budget
• Is a hallmark for the mission of the entire organization
• Secures a competitive advantage
• Improves our public image

With Dwaffler software, you determine, you quantify, the factors' relative importance. Dwaffler's LogicWizard helps you to check for consistency in thinking during this step.

4. Assessment: Assess each recipient in terms of each weighted criterion. Your assessment, your weighting of criteria, and parameters you set combine to generate starting points for allocation amounts. Adjustments are still possible to make (but you're then arguing with yourself, to be honest).

5. Communication of results: The easy part. No accusation of "peanut buttering" (i.e., spreading the same amount or percentage across all in order to appear "fair"). Instead, admiration (and strong support) for a disciplined assessment, especially in tough times. One that is fair. Recipient reports - summaries, comparisons, and areas for improvement - are easily produced.
Steps can be retraced, if necessary, for further explanation.

Performance Reviews

Situation:

• Regulatory compliance.
• Expectations.
• Limited funds.
• Morale issues.
• Downsizing.
• Mixed job descriptions. One pool of funding.

1. Establish judgment criteria: Identify / generalize common factors by which all jobs can be judged.Note: Some have clear measures. Others are more subjective.

Examples:

• Completed assignments on time.
• Achieved high scores on customer surveys.
• Met specified goals and targets.
• Consistently produced high-quality work.
• Strengthened good customer relations.
• Showed dedication to continual self-improvement.

2. Test the list mentally. Have you skewed it to favor any one employee? Or does it apply to all?

3. Determine relative importance: Using Dwaffler software, determine and quantify the relative importance of the criteria.

4. Assess each employee against each criterion. Ask your employees to rank themselves -- good discussion can come from a comparison of your ranking vs. theirs.
A clear ranking of employees emerges from the combined assessment and relative importance of the criteria.

5. Discuss with employees: A report on each employee shows the key areas that that employee should focus on to improve. You can also see their strengths and their standing relative to all other employees.
Employee reviews become more focused and purposeful.

Is there an upside during downsizing?
Dwaffler makes it easier to make tough decisions. It ensures fairness. People understand adversity. They just want to be treated fairly.

Vendor selection

It's not just cost. Fairness, transparency needed (not only for governments) when seeking:

• Infrastructual systems
• Construction
• Logistics
• Machinery, equipment, parts
• IT development or support
• Training, management consulting

1. Define characteristics (subjective and/or objective) of the "ideal" vendor.

Examples:

• Has reasonable cost
• Can provide the required features
• Company is stable and dependable
• Has relevant experience
• Products meet or exceed our quality requirements
• Service will be responsive to our requests
• We feel comfortable working with their representatives
• Is capable to meet all aspects of the contract
• Has a strong positive reputation for honesty, integrity

2. Determine the relative importance of the characteristics.

3. Write your RFP to elicit responses targeting the key characteristics you identified.

4. Evaluate proposals against each characteristic. Scores integrate with each weighted characteristic.

5. Additional Options: Identify risks. Determine relative potential severity of risks. and probability of risks occurring with each vendor. These combine to show "risk level."

[Individually completed characteristic and risk assessments can be consolidated with Dwaffler.]

6. Defensible Results:
Key strengths as well as critical areas of weakness for each. An overall visual showing all potential vendors relative to each other. Retraceable steps to your final choice that are defensible.

Vision Statements - Why?

The phrase "vision statement" may evoke trite, pompous or overworked pronouncements. (Perhaps merely a gag reflex.)
If so, such statements have missed the point.

 

A "vision" states where and what you want to be, thereby scoping actions to take. Without one, you could wander all over the place, depleting resources, achieving nothing.

 

Tips for developing a useful statement:

You're after a simple concept. Don't work it to death. It's not a marketing message. It's not a detailed list of actions. The primary point -- a vision both frames and directs the actions we take.

Context and parameters: A good vision statement is the context for thinking about an issue. A high-level concept. Concise, with clarity. The purpose for a plan. What one hopes to achieve by successfully concluding any potential actions in the plan. It is a general scope, including a time frame.

Sense of direction: It is about choosing. It's about direction. Choosing a destination. (Think "non-geographic.") Knowing succinctly where you are going. Essential if others are to come on the journey. It is the basis for uniting efforts.

Once defined, actions that support achieving it should fall into place far more easily. Good actions align, and help you move in that direction. Actions should always be checked in terms of whether they are taking you toward that destination.

If you can't define where you are going, the people who "accompany" you on the journey might not really be headed in the same direction.

Make it yours: Whether a corporate strategy, a non-profit plan, or a personal financial plan:

• Don't settle for what others have defined as good for them.
• Don't be limited by only what seems possible today.
• Don't worry about trying for inspirational oratory. It is not a marketing statement.

Simplify, clarify what is important to you. Where you want to be. What you want to be. In some given time frame. This "vision," will allow you to judge available options, and decide on the right actions for you.

Avoiding "garbage in, garbage out."

Listen before you leap. Software alone is not the whole answer.

1. Create an unordered list of an "ideal's" characteristics. Start active, early-on solicitation of comprehensive criteria for judgment. If criteria are not identified before options are assessed, any unidentified criterion is likely to be played as a "trump card" later.

Listen for phrases that herald a "reason" for "good" or "better". "Reasons" are the criteria of an ideal. Record them.

• "This matters more because…"
• "This is clearly more important because…"
• "This is better because…"
• "The whole reason we would…."

You could start by first describing the positive qualities of known options. Expand discussion to describe an "ideal." Voice only the characteristic without mentioning the option that was its source. Refine statements to be generic so that all potential options can be judged against them. Avoid discussion of merit or importance of any characteristic while defining it. Judgmental reactions to statements must not be voiced.

2. Weight the relative importance of the characteristics. Prevention of second-guessing of decisions is dependent on reaching consensus on the relative priority of criteria or characteristics. This is where a good software package is far better than "placing sticky dots" or "multi-voting" (techniques that are easily gamed).

• Relative importance is at the heart of discussion of value or merit.
• A simple, quick, disciplined way to reach consensus on relative priority is vital.
• Let each individual in the group be heard, collectively showing results.
• Use a tool that thwarts skewing of outcomes.
• Instantly incorporate any "trump cards" and weight alongside all criteria.

Avoid:
The desire to "move ahead," "vote" or "score" while treating all characteristics as "equal."
Arbitrarily assigned or "estimated" weighting of characteristics.
Both approaches are not valid. Arguments about the results will likely ensue.

Conflict Resolution

When you are faced with: High levels of partisanship. Group agreement needed on priorities. Multiple conflicting solutions suggested. Lack of ownership in final plan feared.

Changing mindset: Conflict is unpleasant. It is "hard to resolve." We avoid it.
A changed mindset is the first step to resolving "conflict," while building ownership. What we think is conflict often isn't. We just fear that it is.

It is easier to find common ground if we regard contradictory statements or desires as "differing options." Solutions stated as "differing options" are neither "right" nor "wrong," nor "good" nor "bad." Go further. Seek and welcome more options, even if they seem to contradict.
But refrain from choosing. Collect only.

Finding common purpose through questioning. Any action or "solution" has some form of motivating purpose. Ask what is hoped to be achieved if an action were successfully executed. A higher level statement of purpose will emerge.

Despite disparity in potential solutions, most groups will find a set of common purposes which they hope to achieve. Seek this common ground.

Example:"Refurbish the theater," and "Locate a new theater facility."
Two very different approaches to achieving something larger. Perhaps the common desire is to "Increasingly grow audience patronage and loyalty."   Agreement will be found more easily at this higher common purpose level. Additional common purpose statements will emerge through repetition of the same querying process. Hold off any discussion of differing options until a full set of common purpose statements have been elicited.

Reaching consensus on importance: Dwaffler software enables a group to discuss and quickly reach agreement on the relative importance of the common purposes.

Assessing the "differing options": All potential solutions are then assessed in terms of all common purposes. Their assessment scores are combined with the already-agreed-upon common purposes' weighting.

Why results are accepted: Final top choices are accepted because of their cumulative strength in achieving the now fully embraced vision (the full set of common purposes). Ownership, built in.