Revised edition
A practical decision system for mandates, failures, vendor choices, and transformation programs. Written first for the in-house leader whose team needs to bring framed, evidence-backed recommendations—not raw escalation.
Who it's for
What you'll be able to do
Table of contents
Part 1
A common language for turning an incoming event into a framed, structured, evidence-backed decision.
Part 2
Move from symptoms and assumptions to evidence, root cause, operating constraints, and the control spine beneath the process.
Part 3
Create real options, prioritize under hard constraints, preserve reversibility, test the answer, and sequence change that can survive new information.
Part 4
Turn analysis into a charter, match the delivery method to the work, align the people who decide, and close the improvement loop.
Daily use
How the book earns its place next to the keyboard — not on the shelf.
The consultant
A mandate lands at a client and the first deliverable is due in days, not weeks. The SCQA one-pager frames the problem on page one, the issue tree structures the diagnosis, and Chapters 19–22 carry the work from recommendation through delivery and measurement. The frameworks are the same ones the client's steering committee already trusts — the examples speak their language.
The in-house lead
Three tax engine demos, one budget, and a committee that re-litigates every meeting. The weighted scorecard fixes criteria before the demos, the RACI settles who decides, and the cost chapter reframes the license line as five-year total cost. The decision survives scrutiny because the method was agreed before the answer existed.
The product owner
Every stakeholder wants their integration first. ICE scoring makes the prioritization explicit, the risk register makes the cost of deferral visible, and the KPI tree ties each roadmap item to a number the business already watches. Roadmap reviews stop being negotiations and start being readouts.
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