Explains how to distil big data into manageable sets and use them to optimise business and investment decisions. Reveals techniques to improve a wide range of decisions, and use simple Excel charts to grasp the results. Includes downloadable Excel workbooks to adapt to your own requirements.

A ONE-OF-A-KIND GUIDE TO THE BEST PRACTICES IN DECISION ANALYSIS Decision analysis provides powerful tools for addressing complex decisions that involve uncertainty and multiple objectives, yet most training materials on the subject overlook the soft skills that are essential for success in the field. This unique resource fills this gap in the decision analysis literature and features both soft personal/interpersonal skills and the hard technical skills involving mathematics and modeling. Readers will learn how to identify and overcome the numerous challenges of decision making, choose the appropriate decision process, lead and manage teams, and create value for their organization. Performing modeling analysis, assessing risk, and implementing decisions are also addressed throughout. Additional features include: Key insights gleaned from decision analysis applications and behavioral decision analysis research Integrated coverage of the techniques of single- and multiple-objective decision analysis Multiple qualitative and quantitative techniques presented for each key decision analysis task Three substantive real-world case studies illustrating diverse strategies for dealing with the challenges of decision making Extensive references for mathematical proofs and advanced topics The Handbook of Decision Analysis is an essential reference for academics and practitioners in various fields including business, operations research, engineering, and science. The book also serves as a supplement for courses at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels.

"A very rich book sprinkled with real-life examples as well as battle-tested advice.” —Pierre Haren, VP ILOG, IBM "James does a thorough job of explaining Decision Management Systems as enablers of a formidable business transformation.” —Deepak Advani, Vice President, Business Analytics Products and SPSS, IBM Build Systems That Work Actively to Help You Maximize Growth and Profits Most companies rely on operational systems that are largely passive. But what if you could make your systems active participants in optimizing your business? What if your systems could act intelligently on their own? Learn, not just report? Empower users to take action instead of simply escalating their problems? Evolve without massive IT investments? Decision Management Systems can do all that and more. In this book, the field’s leading expert demonstrates how to use them to drive unprecedented levels of business value. James Taylor shows how to integrate operational and analytic technologies to create systems that are more agile, more analytic, and more adaptive. Through actual case studies, you’ll learn how to combine technologies such as predictive analytics, optimization, and business rules—improving customer service, reducing fraud, managing risk, increasing agility, and driving growth. Both a practical how-to guide and a framework for planning, Decision Management Systems focuses on mainstream business challenges. Coverage includes Understanding how Decision Management Systems can transform your business Planning your systems “with the decision in mind” Identifying, modeling, and prioritizing the decisions you need to optimize Designing and implementing robust decision services Monitoring your ongoing decision-making and learning how to improve it Proven enablers of effective Decision Management Systems: people, process, and technology Identifying and overcoming obstacles that can derail your Decision Management Systems initiative

As a follow-up to the successful Competing on Analytics, authors Tom Davenport, Jeanne Harris, and Robert Morison provide practical frameworks and tools for all companies that want to use analytics as a basis for more effective and more profitable decision making. Regardless of your company's strategy, and whether or not analytics are your company's primary source of competitive differentiation, this book is designed to help you assess your organization's analytical capabilities, provide the tools to build these capabilities, and put analytics to work. The book helps you answer these pressing questions: What assets do I need in place in my organization in order to use analytics to run my business? Once I have these assets, how do I deploy them to get the most from an analytic approach? How do I get an analytic initiative off the ground in the first place, and then how do I sustain analytics in my organization over time? Packed with tools, frameworks, and all new examples, Analytics at Work makes analytics understandable and accessible and teaches you how to make your company more analytical.

For courses in Decision Making and Engineering. The Fundamentals of Analyzing and Making Decisions Foundations of Decision Analysis is a groundbreaking text that explores the art of decision making, both in life and in professional settings. By exploring themes such as dealing with uncertainty and understanding the distinction between a decision and its outcome, the First Edition teaches readers to achieve clarity of action in any situation. The book treats decision making as an evolutionary process from a scientific standpoint. Strategic decision-making analysis is presented as a tool to help students understand, discuss, and settle on important life choices. Through this text, readers will understand the specific thought process that occurs behind approaching any decision to make easier and better life choices for themselves.

Business Analytics for Decision Making, the first complete text suitable for use in introductory Business Analytics courses, establishes a national syllabus for an emerging first course at an MBA or upper undergraduate level. This timely text is mainly about model analytics, particularly analytics for constrained optimization. It uses implementations that allow students to explore models and data for the sake of discovery, understanding, and decision making. Business analytics is about using data and models to solve various kinds of decision problems. There are three aspects for those who want to make the most of their analytics: encoding, solution design, and post-solution analysis. This textbook addresses all three. Emphasizing the use of constrained optimization models for decision making, the book concentrates on post-solution analysis of models. The text focuses on computationally challenging problems that commonly arise in business environments. Unique among business analytics texts, it emphasizes using heuristics for solving difficult optimization problems important in business practice by making best use of methods from Computer Science and Operations Research. Furthermore, case studies and examples illustrate the real-world applications of these methods. The authors supply examples in Excel®, GAMS, MATLAB®, and OPL. The metaheuristics code is also made available at the book's website in a documented library of Python modules, along with data and material for homework exercises. From the beginning, the authors emphasize analytics and de-emphasize representation and encoding so students will have plenty to sink their teeth into regardless of their computer programming experience.

Decision analysis (DA) guides executives toward logical, consistent decisions under uncertainty. This book instructs readers in applying DA to feasibility analysis, project estimation, and project risk management.This is a wholly rewritten and expanded successor to the best-selling first and second editions.The entire investment lifecycle is covered, from conception, to the project plan, to the post-project review, and to a look-back analysis of the capital investment decision.DA applies to all manner of project management (PM) decisions for individuals, government, and non-profit organizations. The book uses a business investment perspective and assumes that maximizing value for the project owner is the objective.DA is a problem-solving process. There are four key features: 1) probabilities and probability distributions express best judgments about risks and uncertainties. 2) The organization has a decision policy expressed as a single metric (the objective function). 3) Probabilities and outcome values combine in the probability-weighting expected value calculation. 4) The organization as a policy to choose the best expected value alternative.This book aims to make decision making clear, simple, and logical. A clear decision policy can be elusive, and the author offers suggestions for making trade-offs among conflicting objectives. Converting the three pillars of project management (cost, schedule, and performance) into project value equivalents makes the trade-offs clear.This book is intended for serious PM students and practitioners. This is an essential concepts and how-to book. The scope is quantitative analysis, from project inception to post-project review. Project cost and schedule modeling, in modest detail, is essential to feasibility analysis and risk management. A general background in PM and corporate planning will be helpful. The methods are quantitative and straightforward. The reader should be comfortable with basic algebra and Microsoft(r) Excel(r).The book has eight pages of Suggested Reading annotated references (plus footnote additions), over 250 figures, approximately 600 Glossary definitions, and over 2400 Index entries. Online supplements include several whitepapers and other documents, example calculation spreadsheets, detailed color images of several important figures, four videos (including a critical chain simulation), and the Utility Elicitation Program (a web app, free for most users).Key topics include: Decision trees and Monte Carlo simulation for calculating outcome distributions and expected values * Probability concepts, including Bayes' rule for value of information analysis * Popular probability distribution types and when they apply * Eliciting expert judgments, with attention to potential cognitive and motivational biases * Recognizing the three pillars project in terms of project value * A 10-step decision analysis process * Project modeling concepts and techniques, with special attention to risk drivers and other correlations * Deterministic and stochastic sensitivity analysis * Decision policy that distinguishes objectives, time value, and risk attitude * @RISK(r) with Microsoft(r) Project for project simulations under uncertainty * Logical, consistent risk policy expressed as a utility function * Merge bias when task chains converge at a merge point * Tail estimate bias when estimating highly uncertain quantities * Optimizer's curse, a portfolio forecasting bias * Winner's curse, a bias characteristic of auctions * Using the best of critical chain and Monte Carlo simulation * Stochastic variance between a deterministic and a stochastic model * Modeling risk and uncertainty using probabilities, probability distributions, explicit formula relationships, correlation coefficients, risk drivers, conditional branching, and rework cycles.

Make Better Decisions, Leverage New Opportunities, and Automate Decisioning at Scale Prescriptive analytics is more directly linked to successful decision-making than any other form of business analytics. It can help you systematically sort through your choices to optimize decisions, respond to new opportunities and risks with precision, and continually reflect new information into your decisioning process. In Prescriptive Analytics, analytics expert Dr. Dursun Delen illuminates the field’s state-of-the-art methods, offering holistic insight for both professionals and students. Delen’s end-to-end, all-inclusive approach covers optimization, simulation, multi-criteria decision-making methods, inference- and heuristic-based decisioning, and more. Balancing theory and practice, he presents intuitive conceptual illustrations, realistic example problems, and real-world case studies–all designed to deliver knowledge you can use. Discover where prescriptive analytics fits and how it improves decision-making Identify optimal solutions for achieving an objective within real-world constraints Analyze complex systems via Monte-Carlo, discrete, and continuous simulations Apply powerful multi-criteria decision-making and mature expert systems and case-based reasoning Preview emerging techniques based on deep learning and cognitive computing

Rapid technology change is impacting organizations large and small. Mobile and Cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), and “Big Data” are driving forces in organizational digital transformation. Decision support and analytics are available to many people in a business or organization. Business professionals need to learn about and understand computerized decision support for organizations to succeed. This text is targeted to busy managers and students who need to grasp the basics of computerized decision support, including: What is analytics? What is a decision support system? What is “Big Data”? What are “Big Data” business use cases? Overall, it addresses 61 fundamental questions. In a short period of time, readers can “get up to speed” on decision support, analytics, and business intelligence. The book then provides a quick reference to important recurring questions.