Supporting Decisions

Considering that the concept of Business Intelligence grew out of the earlier concept Decision Support, I would like to take a few moments to review what contributes to good decision making.

• Goals, Purpose, Reason
• Context, Scenario
• Knowledge, Experience, Intuition (as a derivative of the latter)
• Analysis

The fact that a decision is to be made implies that there is a scenario requiring some action. This action can either be a response to something, or a self-motivated initiative. Either way, it follows that there is a reason for the need to make a decision. Thus, there is a goal to be achieved.

In order to decide (between alternate paths) one must first be aware of the situation and available options. This requires knowledge, or even understanding, about what is the scenario, and what might be the options to address the scenario.

Knowledge without context is not very useful. Analysis helps us ponder how things fit together. Even decisions apparently driven by intuition have an underlying analysis component to them. Either from previous occurrences of similar problems, where we did more elaborate analysis, and upon repetition of the problem can reuse the outcome. Or by the instinctive combination of everything we ever learned, the so called "sixth sense", by confidence in "gut feelings".

The relevant aspects of analysis in support of an impending decision are around the dependencies, impact and consequences of our planned action. Or in business terms:  the cost, benefit, and risk of our decision.

Think about this in the context of your Business Intelligence efforts. Doesn't this logic seem very straight forward? Should B.I. initiatives not be more manageable along those lines?