After you prioritize elements, you can visualize results
in various graphical formats in order to support your decisions. In
the visuals, priorities are represented as bars, bubbles, and lines.
In this lesson, you visualize your prioritization results
to analyze which car is the best. You also change the criteria weights
to learn how they affect your results.
- To visualize results, click .
- On the toolbar, click the Bar chart icon
(
) to view the results in a bar chart. The bar chart shows one criterion. The chart
indicates that Car C is better looking than Car F. The elements that
rank the highest for a criterion are indicated by green check boxes.
The scale shows relative design appeal in percentages. The lengths
of all bars sum to 100%.
You can choose from several visualizations;
no guidelines exist about which visualization techniques to use in
different situations. For the data in this tutorial, you might also
use the stacked bar chart.
- Click the Stacked bar chart icon
(
). In the stacked bar chart, you can see multiple
criteria simultaneously. As the previous image shows, when you consider
both cost and design, the relative rank is different. When both criteria
are considered, the bar at the top represents the element that ranks
the highest according to the criteria. The bar at the bottom of the
chart represents the element that ranks the lowest according to the
criteria. For car elements, you might have many more criteria,
such as versatility, environmental friendliness, safety, and build
quality. Or, you might have more stakeholders to represent. All these
criteria can be shown at the same time in the stacked bar chart.
- Clear some of the check boxes and see how the value indicators
in the upper right corner change. As you select and clear
the check boxes, the value indicators reflect that you do not get
all of the relative value (design) and the relative cost. In this example,
the value indicators are less useful than they might be in other situations.
For example, if you were considering a set of features to implement
in a software product, you might use the indicators to see what features
to consider in order to get 60% of the value for 30% of the cost.
- Consider what happens if the Price criterion is more important
than the Design criterion. In the right frame, right-click and select Criteria
Scenarios. The Criteria Scenarios
window opens, in which you can explore different scenarios. For example,
if the cost is twice as important as design, which car would be the
best?
- In the Criteria Scenarios window,
move the Price slider until the value is 80%. The black triangles (
) indicate the rank of the elements. The closer
the triangles are to the right, the higher an element is ranked for
a criterion.
- To refresh the order of the elements in the stacked bar
chart based on the changed criteria scenario, minimize the Criteria
Scenarios window, and click the Stacked bar
chart icon
If
price is more important than design, Car F is indicated as the best
because its black triangles are closest to the right. The black triangles
indicate that Car D provides the least design for the price.
If
you close the Criteria Scenarios window, the
relative weight of the criteria that you modified is fixed.
In other situations,
you might consider other issues, for example:
- If I reduce the budget, how would my planning be affected?
- How robust is my risk analysis?
You can experiment with these criteria to see the effects of
such scenarios.
You can now generate a report of the prioritization results.