Discuss the techniques of decision making in groups?

Planning for Decision Making
While decision making without planning is fairly common, it is often not pretty. The terms used to describe it--crisis management, putting out fires, seat-of-the-pants governing--all reveal the inelegance and awkwardness of this way of life. Planning allows decisions to be made in a much more comfortable and intelligent way. Planning even makes decisions easier by providing guidelines and goals for
the decision. We might even say that planning is a type of decision simplification technique (see the discussion of these techniques below).
Decision makers will find four major benefits to planning:

1. Planning allows the establishment of independent goals. The vision which will shape the decisions is set apart from surrounding events. Decisions are not made only as reactions to external stimuli. "Management by firefighting" is replaced by a conscious and directed series of choices. Managers now steer the organization, individuals now steer their lives, rather than being steered by external forces. Sometimes the difference between planning and not planning is described as "proactive" (taking control of the situation) versus "reactive" (responding to stimuli).

2. Planning provides a standard of measurement. A plan provides something to measure against, so that you can discover whether or not you are achieving or heading toward your goals. As the proverb says, If you don't know where you're going, it doesn't matter which way you go.

3. Planning converts values to action. When you are faced with a decision, you can consult your plan and determine which decision will help advance your plan best. Decisions made under the guidance of planning can work together in a coherent way to advance company or individual goals.
Planning is useful in emergency situations, too. When a crisis arises, a little thought about the overall plan will help determine which decision to make that will not only help resolve the crisis but will also help advance the overall plan. Without a plan, crises are dealt with haphazardly and decisions are made which may ultimately be in conflict with each other.

4. Planning allows limited resources to be committed in an orderly way. Budgets, time, effort, manpower--all are limited. Their best use can be made when a plan governs their use.
A simple example would be planning to buy a house or a car. Rather than having to decide between buying the item right now with all cash or never having it, you can plan to buy it over several years by making payments. Or, you might combine this plan with the plan to buy a smaller house and add rooms later as they could be afforded. By planning you can thus accomplish things that might otherwise look impossible.

Decision Levels
We all recognize that some decisions are more important than others, whether in their immediate impact or long term significance. As a means of understanding the significance of a decision so that we can know how much time and resources to spend on it, three levels of decision have been identified:

1. Strategic.

 Strategic decisions are the highest level. Here a decision concerns general direction, long term goals, philosophies and values. These decisions are the least structured and most imaginative; they are the most risky and of the most uncertain outcome, partly because they reach so far into the future and partly because they are of such importance.
For example: Decisions about what to do with your life, what to learn, or what methods to use to gain knowledge (travel, work, school) would be strategic. Whether to produce a low priced product and gain market share or produce a high priced product for a niche market would be a strategic decision.

2. Tactical. 

Tactical decisions support strategic decisions. They tend to be medium range, medium significance, with moderate consequences.
For example: If your strategic decision were to become a forest ranger, a tactical decision would include where to go to school and what books to read. Or if your company decided to produce a low priced product, a tactical decision might be to build a new factory to produce them at a low manufacturing cost.
 

3. Operational.

 These are every day decisions, used to support tactical decisions. They are often made with little thought and are structured. Their impact is immediate, short term, short range, and usually low cost. The consequences of a bad operational decision will be minimal, although a series of bad or sloppy operational decisions can cause harm. Operational decisions can be preprogrammed, pre-made, or set out clearly in policy manuals.
For example: If your tactical decision is to read some books on forestry, your operational decision would involve where to shop for the books. You might have a personal policy of shopping for books at a certain store or two. Thus, the operational decision is highly structured: "Whenever books are needed, look at Joe's Books."
An important comment should be made here. Issues should be examined and decisions should be made at all of these levels. If you discover that nearly all of your thinking and decision making is taking place at the operational level, then you are probably not doing enough strategic thinking and planning. As a result you will lead a reactive life, responding only to the forces around you and never getting control of your life, your direction or your goals.
Some Techniques for Decision Making
This is a list of easy, practical techniques that can be applied to simple or complex decisions. They share the assumption that circumspect analysis is the key to making good decisions. Many decisions are made with too little information and too little thought, in a non-deliberate way. Think about it for a moment: how many people do you know who commonly spend even five minutes structuring and analyzing a decision?
Note how these techniques provide a visible, structured, orderly set of factors involved in a decision, so that the decision maker can consider them in a thoughtful and coherent way. The first three techniques are especially for whether-type decisions, those involving yes/no, either/or, or two-possibility decisions.
1. T-Chart. A T-Chart is an orderly, graphic representation of alternative features or points involved in a decision. In one form, it can be a list of positive and negative attributes surrounding a particular choice. Drawing up such a chart insures that both the positive and negative aspects of each direction or decision will be taken into account.
For example, what are the pros and cons of deciding to buy a sport utility vehicle?
 

 
In another form, two possible choices are listed, with the good points or arguments or effects listed for each. Suppose your company is trying to decide whether to create its own advertising or hire an agency.

  
To fill out this latter form, more than two choices can be included, and a list of negatives for each choice can be added as well.
2. PMI. Edward de Bono refines the T-Chart idea into a three part structure, which he calls PMI for plus, minus, and interesting. Here you first list all the plus or good points of the idea, then all the minus or bad points, and finally all the interesting points--consequences, areas of curiosity or uncertainty, or attributes that you simply don't care to view as either good or bad at this point (consequences that some people might view as good and others might view as bad, for example). The "interesting" category also allows exploration of the idea or choice outside the context of judgment--you don't have to evaluate the attribute into a positive or negative category.
As simple as this technique seems to be, and as often as others will tell you, "Well, of course, everyone does that all the time," this is a very powerful but much neglected technique. Most people believe they list the pluses and minuses of a decision before making it, but in actual practice, many people make a decision or form an opinion before they consider the evidence in an orderly way. Only after they make a decision do they hunt around for reasons to support it.
Considering the evidence on both (or all) sides before you commit yourself emotionally and psychologically to a position will have a major impact on the quality of your decision making.
3. Buriden's Ass. This method of decision making is used when two or more equally attractive alternatives are faced. (From an old fable of an ass placed between two equally nice bales of hay. The ass couldn't decide which bale to turn to because they were both so attractive, and so it starved to death from indecision.) The method is simply to list all the negative points or drawbacks about each decision. That is, when two or more alternatives seem very desirable, we become blinded to any drawbacks. The Buriden's Ass method simply focuses on the drawbacks.
4. Measured Criteria. With this technique, you list the criteria you want your decision to meet and assign points to each criterion based on its relative importance in the decision. Then, each alternative is given a certain number of points according to how fully it meets the criterion. For points you can use a scale of 1 to 10, 1 to 100, or any other range that makes sense to you.
In the example below, traveling by train is rated at 25 out of 30 points for the "comfort" criterion, while the plane is ranked a little less comfortable, at 21 out of
30. Once all the alternatives have been assigned their due points for each criterion, all the points for each alternative are added up and the alternative with the highest total points is the one chosen. In the example below, that would be the plane.
5. Decision Matrix or Weighted Decision Table. This is a slightly more sophisticated version of the measured criteria technique. Here a table is set up with each criterion given a weight depending on its importance in the decision and with each alternative given a ranking for that criterion.