Visionary Tools - Decision Tree Software for Visionary Decision Makers

When you double-click the start menu entry or the link to OccamsTree.exe you will see a window opening like the one on the screenshot below. Take a minute to get your first impression, look into some menus and then let's start working.

The first decision

Double-click the name-box "New Decision Tree" to activate in-place editing of text and type what your decision tree is about.

Right mouse click the end node (the triangle) and chose "Add branches" from the context menu.

You can immediately type into the new name-box the option which will be represented by each of the branches.

The square represents the first decision you have to make. You may click on the small symbol at the square bottom

to edit details of this decision

Remember the double-click for in-place editing? It helps you to add details to the decision and its options. When editing payoffs you should use negative numbers for costs and positive numbers for income.

You can add as many options to your decision as you need (the theoretical maximum is 4,000 billions, just enough for day-by-day decision making) by right clicking any part of the decision node and selecting "Add branch".

Use the right mouse-click on a branch to move it up or down, to define it as the taken option, to add a text comment to remove it again.

Step by step you create your decision and add the information which will later be used to optimize it.

More nodes, chances

If you right mouse click an end node you can add more branches. By default this will give you another decision node with two branches. Right mouse click the node to convert it to a chance node.

Chance nodes are traditionally marked by a circle. There are two types of chance nodes: %-type and numeric. You can choose between them by clicking with the right mouse key on the chance node and selecting from the chance type options.

The percent values of the single possibilities are most commonly desired to add up to 100%. Decision Tree will change the color of the node if they don't but this will not be a problem to you. The software can use any given combination of percentages and calculate the correct average. Numeric chance nodes will not change color.

Numeric values can be any integer numbers. The following example shows a set of PERT estimation from three-point estimates each weighted with "1" for the optimistic value, "4" for the most likely value and "1" again for the pessimistic value:

The follwing tree shows different ways to estimate payoffs and their likelinesses for each decision:

Improve the exististing product is obviously the best solution, it has a positive payoff of $196,000, more than any of the other options.

Where do you get the probability values from? This might actually be a difficult question and the quality and the relevance of your decision tree depend largely on your ability to estimate or to calculate these numbers.

A great source to understand this task is the risk management section of a document called "A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge" which is issued by the Project Management Institute (PMI). You should be able to order it in every book store or you can buy it from the PMI Bookstore.

Nonlinear, constrained optimization

Up to now we discussed a Forced Choice solution, this means one option can be choosen out of a larger number of options (1 from n). But Occam's Tree can also help you to make an Open Choice decision, which means a number of options can be choosen (m from n) according to a process called nonlinear, constrained optimization.

Lets assume we have a budget available of $300,000 which we may use for our investment and which to gain the maximum result of a combination of our options without exeeding our budget. In order to optimize the decision against a budget, we have to change the node type to Decision (Choose multiple) by right mouse-clicking the decision node:

Now we can set a budget against we can optimize a decision. Click the

symbol at the bottom of the decision description and select Show Budget:

Use again

for another optimization. The decision tree allows now several options at the same time: Improve the existing product, go on selling the old product and add a 3rd party product to the product portfolio:

To see the combined investment, click the

symbol at the bottom of the decision description again and select Show Investment (Readonly):

The combined investment of these three options without exceeding the constraining budget is $155,000, it yields a net payoff is $390,500. This number is also referred to as EMV (Estimated Monetary Value).

Advanced calculations

The solution Resell 3rd party product seems to create a fairly attractive income. But the decision will not only include the investment, but also running costs to purchase the goods before we can sell them. To calculate this you can right mouse click the payoff value and select "Edit payoff (advanced)"

The payoff can now be calculated easily as the income from the sales minus the costs of buying the product from the supplier.

This simple calculation might not be sufficient for more complex costing scenarios. If you are using Microsoft Excel as your spread sheet software this should be no problem to you. You simply import the payoff value from an Excel spreadsheet ...

Select Microsoft Excel Workbook as the Datasource and then click

to select your file.

The best is if the cell containing the value has a name (you can assign names in Microsoft Excel by using the menu Insert - Name - Define...). In this case you choose the name from the list of named cells in the Excel workbook.

Using named cells allows you to later edit the spreadsheet by inserting or deletinbg or moving cells, rows and columns, and Decision Tree will still find the right cell - as long as you did not change the name.

You can also link to cells using their address (Row and Col). In this case you have to choose the worksheet first and then the cell.

You might find it helpful that you can change the size of the import window by dragging its frame.

To view or update your links select menu File - External data..., select the link and click "Refresh"...

Occam's Tree will also ask you if external data should be updated whenever you re-open the file.

This function allows you to do the most complex calculations in Excel including Net Present Value projections over several years and using their results in your decision trees.

Clones

Sometimes the same chance or decision might appear on different branches of the tree. You could simply create it several times but there is a more comfortable way. Right mouse click on one of the nodes and chose "Define as clone master".

Now right mouse click another node and select Define as clone. The clone will inherit its settings from the clone master. You may create as many clones as you wish from this clone master until another node is selected as the clone master.

Changes for the clone master will be immediately updated to its clone(s). You might find the outline numbering system helpful to identify Clone master and clones.

Unlink a clone by right mouse-clicking on the node and selecting Unlink clone. You will then be prompted to remove the subnodes or just unlink them which will allow you to edit them as you wish.

By the way: Creating a clone and then unlinking it is a quick way to copy a set of branches from one node to another.

Due dates and overdue decisions

Use the menu File - Tree properties... to set a current date. Open decisions which are due before this date will be changed to a mode overdue and the node will turn red.

How to change decisions

In order to change a decision, right mouse click the node you want to select or the namebox attached to this and choose Take this option.

If the node is set to Choose multiple, the command is changed to Toggle this option, which allows selecting or unselecting each option.

You can alternatively choose Take this path, which selects all decisions as well which are placed left from this decison. Closed decisions will not be changed unless you allow this explicitely in the following dialog:

Optimizing decisions

To optimize decisions right mouse click a node or a namebox and choose Optimize subnode decisions. This will change all decisions right from the node to gain the maximum payoff.

Comments

You can right mouse-click a textbox and select to add a comment. These are intended for your own purpose only and will not be printed or exported to other graphic formats.

Name-boxes with attached comments are marked with a red top-left corner. The comments are shown as tooltips when the mouse hovers over the namebox.

Collapsing and expanding

To hide branches of the tree use the

symbol. This is especially helpful when you have to edit a large tree.

Another option is the toolbar button "Expand/Collapse" which allows you to expand to the same level for all branches.

Hiding numbers

You may want to discuss the flow of decisions and changes with a third person but do not want to show monetary numbers.

Use the menu View - Diagnosis mode (Don't show payoff) to hide these numbers. Switch back to business mode to unhide them again.

Saving

Choose Menu File - Save or File - Save as.... The native file format is OTR, which is in fact XML. If you are using XML aware software, like the recent versions of Microsoft Excel, Word or Internet Explorer, you will be able to open the files and further process them, e.g. to create a report on your decision tree.

Printing

Choose Menu File - Print.... The Setup... button allows you to choose a printer and select paper size and orientation. The button Print... guides you to the printer dialog to make more settings and to start printing.

Exporting

You can export your decision tree to different graphic formats used in presentations, as illustration in text documents and spread sheets or in the internet.

Choose Menu File - Export picture... to export your decision tree diagram to another graphical format.

You can select from different formats of pixel images like bmp, gif or jpg, and vector graphics like wmf and emf.

Occam's Tree Tutorial

Getting Started

After installation