Originally designed to look at ideas for business development
opportunities, it presupposes that a fair amount of plausible ideas
have been derived from an initial idea-generating process, and it is
now necessary to sort out a small number of ‘best’ ideas
to put into practice.
It is essential that the chosen ideas are practical
and viable, but at the same time ensure that the screening process is
clearly rational and impartial, and that it reasonably economical.
Progressive hurdles extend the existing well-established
method of rapidly discarding the items that can obviously be seen to
be of lesser quality (see also Listing
Pros and Cons). Thus freeing up time to put all your effort into
a handful of promising short-listed ideas, thereby reducing the information-handling
load (see also Q-Sort).
A succession of hurdles are encountered, the first
of which being the most inexpensive to operate, so that the highest
cost investigations are used only on handful of ideas that have endured
all former hurdles. Reference to ‘Cost’ conveys the investment
needed to get the information required to evaluate and idea, the four
main stages suggested by the method are:
- The culling stage(s) consist of screens built
from low-cost yes/no criteria – e.g. questions such as: ‘Do
we have the technology to manufacture this product?’ that
can be answered inexpensively from locally obtainable information.
These questions may be grouped into sub-stages; e.g. a sub-stage
might have 3-4 yes/no questions, and the idea might pass the sub-stage
if it gets at least one ‘yes’. Any idea that fails a
sub-stage is not developed.
- The rating stage(s) uses screens of medium-cost
(in general a factor of 10 more expensive) criteria, normally in
sub-stage groups. The criteria are expected to involve analysis
and measurement, though the criterion is still probably a yes/no
pass/fail threshold e.g. ‘is the average travelling time for
this business opportunity > 10% of working hours’.
- The scoring stage(s) involves screens that could
potentially be yet another factor of 10 more expensive and involve
quite complex questions such as whether the return on investment
is likely to be poor, medium or good or at broad band estimates
of the likely grown rate of the market. These conditions are likely
to give numerical measurements with each idea being tested to give
a weighted score on each criterion. Combination at set sub-stages
gives an overall score, this must exceed a pre-set figure if the
idea is to pass the sub-stage hurdle, making it possible for weak
points in one area to be traded against strong points in another.
- The final in-depth analysis involves the few
remaining ideas that have endured all the preceding hurdles and
can now be subject to a full-cost business and market analysis.
- Problems can be encountered with this method for example:
- You cannot assume the cheapest tests are automatically the
best for early screening or it may not be feasible to devise
a suitable series of independent tests (e.g. if groups of alternatives
are strongly inter-dependant, or if they are basically different
from one another).
- The method can also be discredited, e.g. by efforts to misrepresent
or avoid the procedure, such as senior people pushing through
their pet ideas, or demands to re-evaluate rejected options.
[Source:
www.mycoted.com]