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Understand the difference between costs & other considerations and your criteria, and learn how to enter these other considerations.

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Costs and Other Considerations

Understand the difference between costs & other considerations and your criteria, and learn how to enter these other considerations.

When to use

Use this to enter things like purchasing price or risk level, which you can consider against your criteria later on. You can also use this to enter neutral information like what department a project falls under, or store arbitrary information like product URL or Wikipedia page.

Instructions

Costs and other considerations vs criteria

  • It makes sense to use “criteria” to describe the overall benefits of your alternatives, and “costs and other considerations” to describe costs and any other important information that isn’t a benefit (e.g. monetary costs, sector, contact information for an alternative, etc).
  • Costs and other considerations can be weighed against your alternative scores in the value-for-money chart on the alternative selection page.
  • Note that this distinction between criteria vs costs differs from how they are used in a 1000minds conjoint analysis (preferences survey)

Selecting the right data type

  • Number data
    • Use this format for numbers, e.g. cost, population, volume, etc.
    • If you have a numerical constraint (e.g. a monetary budget or number of available staff) then be sure to enter the respective data (e.g. cost, number of staff required) as a number variable. See "adding a budget" for more detail.
  • Text data
    • Useful for adding notes or comments on an alternative, for example contact information for a company, or a product website.
    • If you want to add categorical information, consider using a list instead.
  • List data
    • Choose this format for categorical considerations, whether numerical, text, or a mix of both, for example risk level, sector, or brand.
    • Using a list will allow you to pre-specify different categories by which to group or rank your data. This will make your life easier on the alternatives page and the value-for-money chart, and help you avoid errors from mistyping something.

Adding a budget

  • You can add a budget or other numerical constraint (e.g. a monetary budget or number of available staff) by selecting a number cost/consideration and ticking “summable” on the “details” tab, and then entering your budget/constraint.
  • Budgets can be factored into your decision on the "alternative selection" page.

Hints & tips

The data type you select for a cost/consideration affects how it can be displayed on the value-for-money chart on the alternative selection page (e.g. number variables can be plotted on an axis against cost or displayed through bubble size, whereas list variables can be shown most easily through bubble size or color). It may be easier for you to decide what data type is best for your needs after you've familiarized yourself with the value-for-money chart.

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  • 00:05 Oftentimes you might have other considerations to take into account when
  • 00:09 making a decision, which can be entered in the costs and other considerations page.
  • 00:17 Generally, you should reserve criteria to describe the benefits
  • 00:21 of your alternatives.
  • 00:23 And costs and other considerations to describe any other important
  • 00:27 information that isn't a benefit.
  • 00:30 For example, the costs of your alternatives.
  • 00:34 How many resources you have available to allocate to projects?
  • 00:38 What sector an alternative falls under?
  • 00:41 Or even contact information for a project, or anything else that comes to mind.
  • 00:47 Keeping these considerations separate from your criteria allows you to weigh
  • 00:52 your alternatives against each other more effectively, by using a
  • 00:57 value-for-money chart, like we see here.
  • 01:01 Here you can measure the alternative score against cost or
  • 01:05 any other consideration through the axes and the bubbles.
  • 01:10 We will go over the value-for-money chart later in the course.
  • 01:15 So let's get started with adding some costs and considerations.
  • 01:20 Here we want to buy a new phone and we're trying to decide what phone to buy.
  • 01:26 Probably the first thing that comes to mind that isn't a benefit is the price.
  • 01:31 So we will put that in here.
  • 01:34 Then we enter the type of data that this is,
  • 01:37 which in this case is a number, then click OK.
  • 01:43 Now we see this consideration added to the list.
  • 01:47 When a consideration is selected,
  • 01:49 we can view additional details in the menu on the right.
  • 01:53 Here we can change the name or data type.
  • 01:58 If you want to learn more about what data type is best for
  • 02:01 your cost or consideration,
  • 02:03 there's a handy dandy help tip in the menu on the right to help you out.
  • 02:12 When adding a number variable, you can specify whether or not
  • 02:16 the variable is summable.
  • 02:19 If it is summable, for example, when considering the costs of several projects,
  • 02:24 then we can enter a budget for choosing our alternatives.
  • 02:28 The budgeting feature isn't just useful for money.
  • 02:32 It allows us to use any summable number variable as a limiting
  • 02:36 factor when choosing one or more alternatives.
  • 02:41 For example, if I were to manage different projects at work,
  • 02:45 I could take the summable box and set a budget to factor in how
  • 02:49 much staff I have available to allocate to different projects.
  • 02:55 In our case, we're probably only going to be buying one phone, so
  • 03:00 it doesn't make sense to sum the prices, so we will uncheck this box.
  • 03:05 Maybe another consideration we could add is whether the phone is an
  • 03:11 Apple or Android phone.
  • 03:12 In which case we would set the data type to list.
  • 03:17 And set the categories in the menu on the right.
  • 03:28 We can even add the product URL for
  • 03:30 each alternative by adding a text field where we can enter that data.
  • 03:39 You can add as many considerations as you like.
  • 03:42 But keep in mind that you'll only be able to display at most four at a time
  • 03:47 on the value-for-money chart.
  • 03:51 It might take you some time to get used to differentiating between criteria and
  • 03:56 your other considerations.
  • 03:58 But practice makes perfect, and if you need any help,
  • 04:02 our team is always here to help you out.

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