Decision Analysis

Making decisions is something that RACI and DACI help with, yet provide very little in terms of electronically searchable knowledge.  Many RACI practitioners believe the true value of using RACI is in making the decision.  An equal or perhaps greater value might be inherent in the searchable database of knowledge resulting from using a RACI platform for decision management like Whispr.  Past decisions can yield a wealth of valuable knowledge.

Let’s look at an example to help understand the value.  Imagine a small development shop that regularly helps out a company with their IT needs.  During the course of operations, the company listens to the suggestions of the development shop and as a result, embraces a specific technology platform or programming language for a product or service offering.  This has happened in real life many times over.

Over time, development of the IT goes well but eventually the small development shop does out of business.  The larger company now has a lot of IT investment but very little knowledge about why things were done a certain way.  Since the smaller development shop no longer exists, there is no one left to answer important questions.

A new IT development shop comes in to help the larger company.  During the course of their familiarization process, they become aware that there are several choices that have been made and ask why.  Without any knowledge preservation, they have no way to perform a comprehensive analysis of the past decisions and have no idea of the reasons for various decisions.

Decision Analysis is facilitated by keeping an archive of your decisions, the context in which they were made and the knowledge of who helped drive the decisions and for what reasons.

This is just one minor example of how analysis of past decisions can be a valuable part of your enterprises future.