Decision making is one of the four fundamental thinking processes discovered by Doctors Charles Kepner and Benjamin Tregoe in the late 1950’s by observing successful problem solvers/decision makers. Situation Appraisal, Problem Analysis and Potential Problem (or Opportunity) Analysis are the other three processes.
John Fitch was introduced to these ideas in the mid-1980’s through a Kepner-Tregoe Problem-Solving & Decision-Making workshop. Applying these human thinking processes across technical, process and daily situations, John recognized patterns in the decisions that were being addressed. To effectively make use of his expanding capabilities with these methods, he developed a lean information model to support his emerging decision-centric approach.
The Decision Driven® Approach maps the K-T thinking processes for the following application:
▪ Situation Appraisal develops a network of the issues/questions that must be
answered for the success of the project, product or process and the order in which
they are best addressed.
▪ Problem analysis helps develop boundaries for each decision and the criteria to be
used to evaluate our alternatives.
▪ Decision analysis evaluates the alternatives using our criteria and available or
developed information about the alternatives and selects preferred alternative(s).
▪ Potential Problem Analysis is more typically called Risk Analysis and we evaluate risks
and opportunities to help down select to the appropriate set alternatives consider. The
selected alternative(s) generate constraints in the form of derived requirements which
are used to develop criteria for connected decisions.