Decision Problem Identification

The identification of decision problem occurs at the beginning of a decision process. At this stage, the objective is to understand the decision problem and its components. Some typical questions asked in this stage are:

• What is the decision problem about? Is it difficult and important? Why?

• Who is the stakeholder (decision owner)? Who is responsible, and who will be affected by the decision? Who are other possible participants in the decision process?

• What in general are the options (alternatives) in this case? Can we define some specific ones?

• Which goals (objectives) should be achieved by the decision? Which are the criteria to be met by the decision?

• What are the uncertainties involved?

• What are the goals of the decision process? Should we select a single option, or evaluate or rank more of them?

• What are the expected consequences of this decision process?

• Do we need to justify the decision? To whom and how?

To be suitable for multi-attribute modeling, a decision problem must have some specific properties. Primarily, it should deal with options, which need to be evaluated, analyzed and compared with each other. It is important that the decision problem can be decomposed into smaller, less complex sub-problems, and that the options can be described by their basic features that correspond to the problem decomposition. Thus, we should also ask questions such as:

• Can we think of decomposing the problem into sub-problems? Can we define the relationship between factors that affect the decision?

• Can we think about representing options with their basic features? Which are these features?