The big idea

Not all problems have a clear solution. Some decisions you will need to make about your business are likely to have uncertain outcomes or may be risky. Decision trees are a technique that can help you map out the nature of these uncertainties and plan for different possible results. They break down a problem into a number of points, or nodes, from which you can evaluate the outcome of different courses of action.

Purpose

Decision trees help you to make choices between different courses of action. They give you a visual structure to lay out possible options and investigate the outcomes of choosing those options. They also help you to form a balanced picture of the risks and rewards associated with each possible course of action.

Decision trees are:

• Visual
• Efficient to use
• Immediately revealing
• Complementary with other tools

The Tool

This tool takes you through building a decision tree and assessing different options. It can be used by organisations of any scale or sector. You can complete it on your own for work or personal decisions. You can also do it with a group. The time needed will depend on the problem or decisions you are looking at. For larger decisions, you may need to allow one to two hours.