Plan of Analysis: General Parameters

What is General Parameters and how to create them ...

General Parameter - characteristic of some important general quality of the Alternative. (For example: Profitability, Risk for Business Plans; Safety for Cars)

Plan of analysis may include up to 7 General Parameters. To create General Parameter just click link "Create General Parameter" at the page "General Parameters".

List of the General Parameters looks like :

General Parameter	Weight	Qty
Driving	0.55	5
Safety	0.28	3
Economy	0.17	4

In column "Qty" you can see number of parameters influencing this General Parameter.

Weight reflects priority of the general parameter. The more weight - the more important this Parameter. To assign weights to the Parameters you can use either direct weighing or pairwise comparisons.

In direct weighing, the weights of Parameters are directly given - just click the weight and input value. You can use any numeric scale: 1 to 5, 1 to 10, 1 to 100 or any other. Later on you can normalize the weights - just click "Normalize" button, and every weight on the list will be devided by the sum of all weights, after that the sum of all weights will be equal to 1. It is not mandatory to normalize the weights.

The more reliable way of weighing the parameters is pairwise comparisons. Just click button "Compare" and answer several questions of the type "Which of these two parameters is more important?", and then the system will calculate and show you the weights. (This approach is based on AHP - The Analytical Hierarchy Process theory by T.Saaty). Along with the weights Consistency Index will be calcullated. If Consistency Index < 0.1 it means that you were quite consistent in your answers.

If you have group of experts working on the plan of analysis click button "Experts" to input list of experts and their weight coefficients for parameters.

After you defined list of the General Parameters, you have to define what parameters of the objects are influencing those General Parameters. To open General Parameter just click its name on the list, and than click link Add Parameter in General Parameter. For example if you compare cars, in the General Parameter "Economy" you can include parameters "Average monthly expences", "Price", "Fuel efficiency".