Question & Answer: Should the users of the results of a quantitative analysis (use implementers of the solution) be involved…

Expert Answer

The users of the quantitative models, if not involved, remain generally skeptical about the models and techniques used in the process due to the following few reasons:

• The top managers sometimes feel that the model and solution will prove their intuitive thinking as wrong.
• Sometimes the top managers are from different background, so they generally do not appreciate the nitty gritty’s of the quantitative disciplines.
• There is a fear related to losing the decision-making power
• Sometimes the managers may believe in ‘quick and dirty’ solutions in place of step-by-step decision analysis due to the complexity and for the time required for preparing the models and solving them.

To reduce these effects, user involvement is very important. It has been found by a Sweedish company that only 40% of the projects initiated by the analysts were implemented but almost 70% of the projects initiated by the users were implemented.

Scientific Method

A scientific method of problem solving is said to be adopted when

(1) A specific problem has been defined and identified

(2) Relevant data regarding that problem have been collected

(3) A tentative hypothesis has been formulated

(4) Definite experiments have been conducted to test the hypothesis

(5) Results from the experiments have been interpreted objectively and

(6) The above steps have been repeated until a feasible and acceptable solution is found