I have just released the new Compare Alternatives capability to both the Decision Driven® Strategy and Decision Driven Life web services. You can now toggle between 2 different comparison views:
Tornado Chart: This chart compares the relative effectiveness of any pair of alternatives. It displays their advantages/disadvantages in a simple bar chart format that highlights the discriminators between the 2 solutions.
Tornado Chart - Portfolio decision
Spider Chart: The Spider Chart compares up to 5 alternatives at a time against the top 15 criteria. It is very useful for portfolio decisions where you may consider 10-15 alternatives and commit to implement 5-8 based on their relative merits.
Spider Chart - Portfolio decision
Spider charts are also known as Radar Diagrams. I’ve intentionally implemented this as a “lopsided” diagram in which the length of each “spoke” matches the priority/weight of the criterion it represents. This presents a truer picture of the “trade space” where alternatives compete for supremacy between the must limit and ideal values. The area inside each “web” represent the overall effectiveness of an alternative; the web with the greatest area suggests the most attractive solution, all things considered.
Spider charts are also a good way to capture a competitive analysis. Use it to score out your organization’s market positioning statements (value propositions or differentiation strategies) relative to your competitors. Spider charts are also good for recognizing and communicating opportunities for hybridization; combining 2 alternatives in such a way that you can take advantage of their relative strengths while offsetting their weaknesses. Business partnerships, mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures can all be visualized as hybrids.
Both charts include a common legend that graphically displays the overall effectiveness of each alternative as a summary scoring bar. This can help you quickly separate the wheat from the chaff and zero in on the top few alternatives.
Filed under: What's Happening | Tagged: market positioning, evaluation, value proposition, scoring, portfolio decision, spider chart, radar diagram, compare alternatives, advantages, tornado chart, trade space, competitive analysis, differentiation strategy, hybrid alternatives, partnerships, mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures
