Making Appropriate and Timely Decisions. Avoiding the Extremes: The Premature Analysis and Extreme Analysis.

In the decision-making process, the person responsible for them must go through a thin path between two harmful extremes to arrive on time to the most convenient decision. These extremes are Premature Analysis and Extreme Analysis.

Premature Analysis leads to undue, intuitive, rather unsupported conclusions, and Extreme Analysis does not produce conclusions (Paralysis by Analysis).

Often the presence of one or another extreme scenario in the organizations is due to the own organizational structures and cultures. Therefore, it is advisable to know these scenarios to avoid them or to mitigate their negative effects and thus make the most convenient decision.

Organizational characteristics in decision making:

1. Premature Analysis case:

• Level of staff participation: Restricted.
• Type of hierarchy: Concentrated, Vertical. Centralized decision making, dominant leader presence.
• Class of opinions: In general Convergent. Tendency to unanimity or agreement with the group's decision.
• Type of leadership: Authoritarian. Proposals imposed by leaders or groups at different levels of the organization.
• Type of attitude toward decision making: Intuitive. Decision-making based on basic elements is not well supported.

2. Extreme Analysis case (Paralysis by Analysis):

• Level of staff participation: Wide.
• Type of hierarchy: Wide, Horizontal. Risk: Excess of horizontal procedures.
• Class of opinions: In general Divergent. Risk of conflict. Weak communication between stakeholders.
• Type of leadership: Consensual, Passive.
• Type of attitude towards decision making: Analytical. Little guidance toward the goal or conclusion.

Keys to avoid the extreme scenarios:

1. Premature Analysis case:

• Promote the cross-functional process for ideas and opinions. 
• Tolerance of dissent.
• Promote the positive and proactive questions.
• Equity in the treatment of the opinions from different parts of the organization.
• Make decisions based on mature reflection.

2. Extreme Analysis case or Paralysis by Analysis:

• Efficient arbitration to make fast and rational decisions.
• Promote dissent along with decision-making.
• Promote horizontal and vertical communication. Avoid group isolation and excessive paperwork.

How to overcome mental obstacles in problem-solving

There are a number of different mental obstacles that can interfere with our ability to solve a problem quickly and efficiently, such as:

1. Functional Fixedness: This term refers to the tendency to view problems only in their customary manner. Functional fixedness prevents people from fully seeing all of the different options that might be available to find a solution.
2. Misweighting:  Misunderstanding of available information.
3. Irrelevant or Misleading Information: When you are trying to solve a problem, it is important to distinguish between information that is relevant to the issue and irrelevant data that can lead to faulty solutions. When a problem is very complex, the easier it becomes to focus on misleading or irrelevant information.
4. Wrong Assumptions: When dealing with a problem, people often make assumptions about the constraints and obstacles that prevent certain solutions.
5. Mental Set:  People tendency to only use solutions that have worked in the past rather than looking for alternative ideas.

In order to correctly solve a problem, it is important to follow a series of steps which includes developing strategies and organizing knowledge.

Recommended steps:

1. Identifying the Problem: While it may seem like an obvious step, identifying the problem is not always as simple as it sounds. In some cases, people might mistakenly identify the wrong source of a problem, which will make attempts to solve it inefficient or even useless.
2. Defining the Problem: After the problem has been identified, it is important to fully define the problem so that it can be solved.
3. Forming a Strategy: The next step is to develop a strategy to solve the problem. The approach used will vary depending upon the situation and the individual's unique preferences.
4. Organizing Information: Before coming up with a solution, we need to first organize the available information. What do we know about the problem? What do we not know? The more information that is available, the better prepared we will be to come up with an accurate solution.
5. Allocating Resources: Of course, we don't always have unlimited money, time, and other resources to solve a problem. Before you begin to solve a problem, you need to determine how high priority it is. If it is an important problem, it is probably worth allocating more resources to solving it. If, however, it is a fairly unimportant problem, then you do not want to spend too much of your available resources into coming up with a solution.
6. Monitoring Progress: Effective problem-solvers tend to monitor their progress as they work towards a solution. If they are not making good progress toward reaching their goal, they will reevaluate their approach or look for new strategies.
7. Evaluating the Results: After a solution has been reached, it is important to evaluate the results to determine if it is the best possible solution to the problem. This evaluation might be immediate, such as checking the results of a math problem to ensure the answer is correct, or it can be delayed, such as evaluating the success of a therapy program after several months of treatment.

Integrating Concurrent Engineering & Lean Engineering (CE+LE)

Concurrent Engineering approach aims to prevent potential problems by promoting the incorporation of downstream concerns into the upstream phases of an ongoing process. Lean Engineering approach means eliminating the waste of time and resources caused by the unnecessary generation of knowledge and complex designs not required and also eliminating time spent on non-value-added activities. Mixing both approaches will yield significant improvements in project performance.

Typical issues that produce waste of engineering:

1. Over-production: Implementing analysis, reports and tests not needed.
2. On Hold: Waiting for decisions or waiting for input.
3. Defective Outputs: Rework due to wrong requirements or input. Errors causing the effort to be redone to correct a problem.
4. Unused employee creativity: Not engaging engineers in process improvements for engineering.

Clues to applying Lean Engineering (LE) + Concurrent Engineering (CE):

1. Focusing on Customer needs (LE).
2. Simplicity in design (LE).
3. Design Reuse & Share of features or attributes (LE).
4. Variability Reduction (LE).
5. Deletion of nonvalue-added activities (LE) : 40%-60% of the typical engineer’s or designer’s time is spent on nonvalue-added activities.
6. Focusing on Value activities (LE), which means apply control on:
 • Features and attributes: Satisfy customer needs only.
 • Quality: Lack of defects.
 • Availability on time: Available when it is needed.
 • Cost according to the budget.
7. Enhanced overlapping strategy (CE).
8. Downstream concerns are considered upstream (CE).
9. Implementing Multidisciplinary Concurrent Team (e.g., virtual team) (CE).
10. Implementing early contact with downstream specialists, suppliers and subcontractors (CE).

MANAGING ASSUMPTIONS DURING PROJECT EXECUTION AND PLANNING.

Adequate project assumptions management is a key issue for the successful implementation of the Concurrent Engineering. Some useful methods for managing assumptions are listed below:

1. Assumption-Based Planning:
   Assumption-Based Planning (ABP) is a tool designed for improving the robustness and adaptability of plan for reducing the number of avoidable surprises in any plan or planning. It is primarily a post planning tool that concentrates on the assumptions in an already-developed plan that are most important to plan´s success and that are most uncertain. ABP decrease the risk that assumptions represent.
2. Critical Assumption Planning:
   Major uncertainties in the business proposition are isolated as critical planning assumptions. Critical assumptions in the plan are then tested. The test sequence is determined by the potential reduction of uncertainty per dollar of test cost. Assessment of the assumption test results marks a milestone. At each milestone the business plan is revised to reflect what has been learned, and the venture is redirected or terminated. This process avoids the wasted effort and expense of pursuing the original plan until commercial failure becomes obvious.
   Keys for Planning:
   Differentiation between primary and derivative assumptions with focus on extracting and understanding the primary assumptions.
   Early construction of a model of the business plan that allows calculation of the impact of primary assumptions such as price or sales productivity factors on derivative assumptions such as revenues and income.
   Assignment of uncertainty ranges to the primary assumption values, not just the most likely values.
   Identification of the critical planning assumptions by determining the impact of their uncertainty ranges on venture net present value.
   Selection of the next venture milestone based on the test program that results in maximum reduction of uncertainty at least cost in least time for the most critical assumption(s).
3. Platform-based planning:
   Future results can be extrapolated from a well-understood and predictable platform of past experience. Predictions could be accurate because they are based on solid knowledge rather than on assumptions
4. Discovery-Driven Planning:
   Discovery-driven planning offers a systematic way to uncover the dangerous implicit assumptions that would otherwise slip unnoticed and thus unchallenged into the plan
   It is based on the implementation of:
   Reverse income statement:
   Modeling the basic economics of the business
   Pro forma operations specs:
   Laying out the operations needed to run the business.
   Key assumptions checklist:
   Ensuring that assumptions are checked
   Milestone planning chart:
   Specifying the assumptions to be tested at each project milestone.